###### tags: `Important` `Lore` `Spriting` `Coding` `Direction`

# General Overview

This document will cover the basics of what our plan is, from a vague point-of-view. The intention will not to be caught up in the intricacies quite yet; throwing ideas at a wall and seeing what sticks. This will be a more official document that said, but it's fair to remind people that at the end of the day, this is a hobby. Between players, admins, coders, and anyone else involved. We're here to just have a fun time and make something unique. Passion is a good tool of creation as it is of destruction. Keep this in mind moving forwards.

Remember that ideas can be given directly to @Dahlular#3757 on Discord, as well as #Public-Developer-Talk on the Hyperstation Discord. Not everything will match our point of intention, and that's okay.

Space Station is a big and wide array of ideas and concepts, and a lot of environments will accept ideas that others may not indulge in, including us. If your ideas don't fit us, don't be afraid to branch out. As long as your community and ideas aren't driven by spite, you can go a long way. Don't be another blackjack and hookers server.

:blue_heart:

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:bulb: ***Table of Contents***
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## Fundamentals of Rebasing

Our main goal will be to rebase from [Citadel Main](https://github.com/Citadel-Station-13/Citadel-Station-13) code to a more-fitting [Citadel RP](https://github.com/Citadel-Station-13/Citadel-Station-13-RP) base. This will be a rather painful process due to intended version-parity we wish to bring to the table, as Hyperstation lacks the coders and time necessary to make big changes at an apt pace. It took us 3 years to get an actual HackMD up, if that tells you something.

### Why Rebase?

Over our three years of running Hyperstation, including its rocky start and extremely-just growing pains, our idea of how the server will function has changed drastically over time. Initially, we were a very in-line fork of Citadel Main code that functioned on a **Low-Roleplay** mindset. That lasted about a handful of months before we decided to reconsider, and bring a whitelist to the table as well. After flushing out much of the Community's waste and unneeded members, we decided to push that further to an **High-Roleplay** environment. This is how current-day Hyper is; and while it works, a lot of issues have popped up over time.

### Lack of Maintained Code

The one major issue with our codebase right now is our sheer limited number of coders, and the ideas we want to push out in unison. It's hard to do something as unique as our intentions without falling blatantly in-line with the rest of SS13 servers; such as our isolationist-like lore, unique features, and our obviously-intended fetish code. For good reason, nobody wants to touch that from the sidelines; and internally, we often opt not to pull upstream unless absolutely necessary. This is a double-edged sword that has helped mold Hyper into what people enjoy, as well as make it a bit old and outdated in the eyes of some. Over time, Hyper's code has collected more bugs than features due to this. Our solution is to follow closeby Citadel RP's code a bit more when we do happen to rebase, to ease both growing pains and ensure code stability. But it's not as simple as that, outlined further ahead.

### Gameplay Decimating Roleplay

The biggest issue of running High-Roleplay on a TG-based environment is the fact that it needs **a lot** of admin babysitting; primarily due to the amount of abusable leverage that is handed out to players with ease on such a codebase. A common thing to say is that High-Roleplay does not exist on TG bases, and as time has gone on, this stands more and more true. Adminning is not an easy job when gameplay abusability can happen both intentionally, and unintentionally as well. While an admin's job is to ensure that a server runs smooth in this regard, let's not lie to ourselves here and pretend like an admin is a machine. It's easy to stress and burnout as an admin when dealing with tickets and player bickering-- and the same is true for players dealing with an admin in a bad mood as well.

The most prominent issues that stand out right now on our base is Lavaland, Xenoarcheology, Xenobiology, and genetics. These are brief mentions of jobs that have caused issues time and time again, and while it's easy to blame a player for abusing fun stuff, it's important to remember that our vision does not fit the vision of those who implemented these jobs in the first place. Thus, it causes naturally-occurring tickets to crop up frequently. This is stressful for players who are just trying to play the game and get noted for powergaming, and stressful for admins who have to warn people about this constantly. Conversely, it has also caused a lot of issues with players who do happen to leverage the gear from these jobs negatively.

### Just Rework or Remove the Issues!

This is a simple answer, and nobody can be blamed for taking this point of view. But as it's a simple answer, it does completely disregard how much moving parts are at-hand for a server like Hyper, let alone any SS13 server. Reworks and gameplay more in-line with our ideas certainly helps ensure a server like ours is much more acceptable, but over time we've learned that there's only so much you can do. No matter the amount of code changes, lore overhauls, and player-environment adjustments we've made, there's one thing that will always remain static unless you take drastic measures.

### Expectations

One of the biggest and most important thing I've learned about Space Station 13 players over time is the concept of player **expectations**. Meaning that while players can be molded into your server's ideas, that will never occur if you don't communicate them over the player's expectations. If a player logs onto a TG server, they will behave innately very different than if they logged onto a Bay server- from a general point of view. This has been a nonstop recurring theme for Hyper's lifespan, even to this day.

There are new players who log on and expect us to be treated like Skyrat, TG, Citadel, VORE, or wherever else they may come from. Even many players are completely shocked and confused when they learn that it's not a Nanotrasen station; the more hard-to-adjust majority realize this too late. A player cannot be blamed for this, but a player brings their expectations with them-- and this includes their habits. The acceptability of habits on one server may not be acceptable on another, which is a common theme here.

I've even had to deal with embarrassing adminhelps involving players asking where our ERP mechanics went; in which I'd have to tell them that we never had any in the first place, and don't intend on ever having them. Not only does this clearly communicate to me a SPLURT player, it's a blatant show that someone's expectations are not in-line with the server they're playing on. So, it's on us to make that stuff more important and prominent.

## We Rebase, Now What?

We have a lot of work cut out for us moving ahead, especially with our ambitious plans. But our goal stays the same: **making something unique and interesting.** That's the spirit of Hyper, and it comes in a lot of forms. Not only on the obvious side of our fetish-intentions, but on the other side of a lax and adapted setting to support it.

### The Lore

I've said it briefly before, but Hyperstation has a very **"Isolationist"** type of Lore. This meaning that it's intended to be incompatible with other servers, and to be more of it's own thing. The lore itself completely disregards common expectations to ensure that people can find something new. As well as this, it's less grounded in traditional **Sci-Fi**, and more **Fantasy Sci-Fi**, meaning that aspects of magic and less reality-grounded themes are prominent. That said, the intention is keeping it open-ended enough for people to donate to, without getting caught up in the details. Being vague and open to interpretation can go a long way.

One of the main points of our lore is the complete de-facing of the concept of being a **snowflake**. When it comes to make-believe furries in a make-believe universe, labelling things as "snowflakey" is not only incredibly eye-rolling, but an uphill battle you'll never win.
Any setting can be twisted and contorted to be classified as "snowflakey", people often only say this because they don't like it for not being mainstream enough, or ex cetera.
(TG) Traditional Space Station lore can be twisted that way; after all it's a dystopian setting where you slave away for a mega-corporation that owns your soul, and evil men who fight wars over hot-pockets will blow up the nuke on your station. While I find this hilariously silly and bad, a lot of people like it. And that's okay.
**Let people have fun, and grow up.**

As a brief synopsis of the lore, it takes place within the Andromeda Galaxy, using completely-alien civilizations outside the scope of humanity. The current time is The Ninth Era, Cycle Eighty (9E80C); in which approximately eighty cycles prior, a new Era was founded. Eras are a prominent example of technological progression, or thematic change for the large **Azurean** civilization. The ninth Era is often referred to as the Era of the Wing, in which inter-galactic flight has been trivialized, and a new rush for colonization outside the scope of Andromeda has begun.
Below are some basic fundamentals for the setting.

- Andromeda itself is in a galactic state of peace and harmony, as the civilization itself is an extremely ancient and long-lasting one built on utopian ideals. The vast majority of the galaxy lives in a post-scarcity setting, where basic needs are fulfilled. Food, water, shelter, and the like are not only easy to come by, but often given free rights to those who simply need to get by.
- Technology itself is often referred to as "ultratech" or "high-luxury", where even the most mundane of objects can have an extremely advanced form of technology involved for our modern comparisons. Technologies have progressed so far that much of them can be compared to magic, which rolls back into the setting being Fantasy Sci-Fi.
- Bigotry in most forms are completely eliminated due to community-driven unity and selfnessness focus. Speciesism, sizephobia, racism, transphobia, and the like are taboo in nature and frowned upon in many forms. Coming across a character with one of these traits is a rarity. Needless to say, people are disallowed to make bigoted characters on our server. We don't roll that way.
- Capital itself is moreover of a dead or dated concept for many, where the goal of life is to find your meaning, not slave away 9-5 for a home. Jobs are still wanted outside the scope of automation however, mainly to support one of the fundamentals of Azurean society, which loops back to finding meaning in the lack thereof. The vast majority of the galaxy is socialist-like. This will be outlined furthermore in later lore documents.
- Militaries and war are also dead concepts by Andromeda; as the majority of it lives in complete and utter harmony for the utopian worlds that its surrounded by. Moreover, the concept of **Engram** combined with a sheer lack of scarcity means that war simply just does not have a reason to occur, and if it does, it is just as easy to snuff out. As such, militaristic ideas are also completely foreign and strange to Azurean inhabitants. Diplomacy always comes first.
- Conflict in itself is often internal rather than external though, meaning that an individual may struggle to find reason or will within such a perfected world, since such a thing truly does not exist, even in this setting. Depression is a common theme, but so too is mental health and awareness. Conflict may also take form in fauna incursions and the like for more dangerous worlds, as well. Generally though, conflict is few and far between, with it only intensifying as you leave Andromeda's influence. As a rule of thumb, conflict is often "Man vs. Self", and/or "Man vs. Environment".

### Translating to the Server

Since the lore is extremely isolationist, the difficult part is absolutely going to loop back around to player expectations. The station itself is known as Layenia Station, housed in a gas giant on the outer rim of Andromeda; one of the few places that has open (yet moderated) borders to the Milky Way galaxy, since the much more brutish, close-minded and less technologically-advanced civilization of humanity was not accepting to the likes of Kinaris and their uplifting efforts. This is ample opportunity for people to use their characters that they'd play on other servers here, since canonically Layenia accepts a lot of "Outsiders", as they're commonly called.

When it comes down to the feel and and vibe of the game itself, it should reflect a more light-hearted and lax tone that we want to aim for. The first step, is starting with the sprites.

Most servers use Eris blues and dull grays to show a very cold and materialistic world; daunting, and not comfortable for obvious reasons. We wish to swap the entirety of this out for a more [Solarpunk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk) idea, where ecologically-friendly warm colors linen with plantlife and fluid tanks helps stress this. This is going to be a lot of work, but for the sake of changing expectations and stressing the setting in every way we possibly can, it will be worth it.

#### Spriting Examples...
``A basic concept for our walls and floors done by Paige on the Discord, with help of ToonClyde and Dahlular. While these are still being designed, the bottom three are our intended palette now.``


``An early concept of sprites done by Arctaisia. While they're too saturated, they help sell our intended purpose of solarpunk concepts moving forwards. They are excellent references.``

#### Lore Appropriation to Gameplay

After and during the spriting process, we'll need to consider how to lore-appropriate mundane objects to support our direction and different feel. For example, converting the doors on objects like lockers to shutters is currently something we're looking into, and with enough small changes like this, it will help support our overall feel. Changing names and descriptions similarly will ensure that the setting brings the lore to the table in a responsive way.

Not all objects will be easy to replace however, as there are entire parts of the station's function we need to look into. Take Security as a department for example; the abraisive red palette + PMC mindset directly goes against what we are planning, so a complete overhaul is needed. For example, Security will be instead replaced by Safety, a department that ensures station safety regulations are met, and as well as fauna incursions are stunted in their tracks. It's not usually their job to deal with crew acting up since Kinaris never would hire mentally unwell characters to that degree (self-antagging is extremely frowned upon), but they do have the amenities to cover that kind of stuff. Security officers would be replaced by safety personnel, head of security would be safety lead, and lawyers would be comparable to your silly OSHA inspectors. Most gear and items would primarily be about dealing with simplemobs and any crystalline entities that Layenia Station would have. Stuff like that.

Mapping is going to be a prominent thing as well, since we'll need to nuke basically all maps and start from scratch with Layenia and it's local binar star system. Building Layenia once more will be daunting, but exciting.

### Hyper Parity

One of the main concerns of such a rebase is losing the mechanics that have made Hyper what it is. Limited but not included to our unique theme and flavor, but the "Hyper" part of Hyperstation as well. Needless to say, having version parity equal to this will 100% be a goal we'd have to work on. The fetish code that makes your sprites look a certain way will go a long ways, and while I'm personally not fond of mechanics like portal panties due to not being able to emote through them, that's something we'll need to work on as well. More text-responsive actions for that part of the community beats mechanical ones, always.

One point of parity with Hyper mechanics is actually the sizecode present within the server. Not only have I noted that it's buggy when testing, it also is in a very overpowered/unbalanced state. I was the one who originally balanced it around size affecting health, speed, mob class, and ex cetera on our server, so I'm sure I'll do it again. I'll have to port Normalizers as well; thankfully Virgo has a base for that already, assuming less buggy than what we already have.

### New Mechanics

Lowest on the priority list, but having a new codebase much friendlier to our intentions will help us drive new mechanics altogether. The first of which being Industry, which will be outlined in a later document. Until then, here's a very comical visual guide I made with Arctasia, as well as a refit of Sector Command (CentCom) that is planned as well.

``A basic outline of our new Industry department, which works close with Cargo and Chemistry as well as Engineering.``

``A basic outline of Central Command, being renamed to Sector Command to fit the lore. It's known as a Gridlock Station, which is the only way in- and out- of a star system. Every shift end, the shuttle will arrive at the dock. It functions as a small commercial zone, command point, and cargo/bus depot. Characters do not canonically live here; there are just dorms for those who need extended stay here.``

## Conclusion

Rebasing will be a difficult task, probably the most difficult one we've taken on yet at Hyper. Between learning a new codebase, adjusting the community, porting and spriting, there will be a high amount of effort. But for the sake of longevity, a healthy server, and taking one step away from Our Unfortunate Accidents ||servers like GS13 and SPLURT are my fault, due to banned players adopting the "blackjack and hookers" syndrome|| we will be doing something new and unique.

Needless to say, any help would be appreciated with the project so this year-long project doesn't turn into a multi-year issue.