# Gateway Guidelines + Path Forward

## Gateway Guidelines

### DO
- **When in doubt, ask a maptainer before proceeding.**
- Make the gateway interesting. The previous maps are relics of the times they were made, and any new attempts should try to match the quality we now aim for with ruins and station maps.
- Provide enough of a carrot for players to be enticed into the gateway. While balance is very important, as established below in the DO NOT section, there does ultimately need to be a reason for players to enter the gateway, and since the sense of exploration only lasts for the first few runs, loot is going to be important.

### DO NOT
- Provide the player with obscenely powerful loot. Gateways are part of the normal round progression under the proposed system and this means they should not completely derail the rounds. Some reasonable weapons are fine (think what the player can get at cargo), but think *very* carefully before handing the player nuke ops gear, as an example.
- Likewise, we don't want monsters from the gateway passing through to cause problems on the station. Previously this was an issue with Caves, where there were skeleton ghost spawners- I don't want to see a repeat of this.

## Existing Gateways

### Salvageable
- Caves
- Currently config disabled and requires a rework
- Has a ton of gamer gear. Thermals, special laser guns, soulstones, MJOLNIR, a necromancer stone, a demon heart (blood crawling), instant summons book, !!!PLASMA FIST!!!
- Entering the gateway straight up kills 95% of people straight up because it has inhospitable atmosphere
- "could have the bones turned into something, etc.
- ~~Needs the ghost spawners removed if they haven't been already. We don't need more skeleton murderbones because someone didn't read the flavour text, *especially* if these are going to be run without admin supervision.~~
- This has (or at least should have) code limitations, in the form of blocking skeletons from going to the station or they die
- Even if the ghost spawn is killed (due to their stationstruck component) they can still be brought back to the station and revived (oversight)
- Moon Outpost
- **This has an active rework! https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/68031**
- Really needs a major overhaul. There's a full z level there and it only uses a tiny portion, which leaves plenty of room for expansion. Additionally, the design presented currently is a bit... disjointed? You have three main areas with no real pointing between them, and the design within them is dated.
- Possibly some bespoke assets, too, so it's not using asteroid dust to try and be moon dust.
- Research
- "could have the bones turned into something"
- Strip out the worst offenders of the genetics powers. Hulk, xray, etc- they're all there, and all need to go.
- Snowdin
- Fix the issues with subdividing z-levels. Ladders were previously used as a teleport system (see Snow Cabin, Snowdin, Underground Outpost/Caves (not sure which)) but that's been broken by multi-z.
- Needs a freshening up with our newer aesthetic options, and a loot audit, but this is the main "good enough" map we have.
- Underground Outpost
- "could have the bones turned into something"
- "has outdated stuff that's been broken by new code changes, the same stuff is on snowdin and undegroundoutpost"
- "it's just dated, they're passable enough that I don't want to take the axe to them entirely, but not good enough to stay indefinitely"
- Snow Cabin
- Mostly an RP map, needs more activities to compete with the other maps.
- The Beach
- It's a beach. Nice RP map, but it's a little plain. Should be bumped to a full sized map (255x255) and given some more stuff to do overall, especially if it's going to remain in the pool and try to compete with the other updated missions.
- The original mapper wanted me to mention this: much of the surrounding water (as marked by rocks and flora) are invisible walls, and anyone working on the map should be mindful of that.

### "Pretty much unsalvageable"
- Academy
- "I rather like the concept of academy, though this could use a full redo."
- If anyone attempts a redo of Academy, I'd suggest hamming up the idea of it being a wizard school, and aiming more for that aesthetic- whether that's Hogwarts or Wizard Elementary is up to you, but making it *feel* like a school would be great.
- Any remake should also pay attention to loot. Parlour trick wizard spells (recall item comes to mind) are mostly fine, but the staff of polymorph and enchanted tarot cards should go.
- Challenge
- "Challenge seems to mostly be a big pile of loot behind a static obstacle course. That's something I'd like to avoid."
- Don't bother remaking it. It's a test map for gateways that's managed to survive 6-ish years.
- Space Battle
- "Again, cool concept. But very dated and blocky mapping. Very few decals. Big chunky identical rooms."
- As said above, great concept, but will need a complete rebuild. Tips for anyone trying again is to make it feel more like an in-progress battle than a leisurely day out to the Nanotrasen cruiser by the Syndicate.
- Aim for a ship aesthetic. At present the rooms on this map are some of the largest in the entire codebase, making chem factories and atmospherics look like well utilised, perfectly sized spaces. To echo advice from WJohn, who made a few of the whiteships: the key to ship design is to make rooms only as large as they absolutely need to be, cramped is good.
- Wild West
- "wildwest is poorly designed to the nth degree. it doesn't even succeed at what it tries to be. I would love a like, frontier planet away mission trying to emulate a wild west style. instead we get a sandstone room followed by a wooden room followed by a big random stone room"