Dual personalities

Im really new to SS14, and maybe this has been suggested before, but i think it would be really cool if you could smush two brains into one guy, and have both players have control over one character. theres a couple ways to go about this, you could have one only be able to talk, while the other is in their thoughts, or one be able to control the character or smth. however to differentiate it from a personal ai, you could make it so both people move the character, maybe at half speed, but if both players are trying to go in the same direction, go normal speed. if they are going in opposing directions, stop completely.

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mke it so it randomly swaps with no indication.
would also be neat if one side was a antag and the other not.
bonus points if the “backseat” brain can speak to the person outsside and be a voice to them.

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Having them swap sounds really funny. The “private brain talking” will need to wait for the chat refactor.

afaik this is a trait you can have in 13

SS13 has the Split Personality ghost role, which is similar and could be fun to implement once we introduced brain damage as a damage type.
It makes you share the body with another player you can telepathically communicate with. The control is randomly swapped from time to time. Having both players control a character at the same time is technically not possible due to network latency, so you would have to disable clientside movement prediction, which makes it feel really sluggish. If you want to try that out, there is currently the chef’s hat item, which allows a small animal like a mouse to control the person wearing it.
Also some players may feel uncomfortable when they loose control over the character they have created and see it act in ways they normally would not, which is something we should keep in mind if we decide to implement this idea.

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Yes. YES YES YES. If you guys are concerned with the character swapping, there’s also the Imaginary Friend ghost role, which is the same except it behaves like a passive holoparasite that can look through walls. It’s very good to give this to a newbie so you can train them in coordination or whatever job they are doing. I would certainly love to see it implemented. I always wanted to play both of those roles.

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If someone wants to give it a try to implement one of those I would wait for Slam’s chat refactor first though. That will allow you to easily add telepathic communications between the imaginary friend or split personality and the original player.

I think the general idea of two players sharing a body is pretty neat, but I’d suggest being careful about how you work antags into this. If there’s just a normal chance for the other player to be an antag, then it’s no big deal, but if it’s guaranteed (or a very high chance) then you run into some… not-so-great stereotypes about plurality. I don’t really want to see the ol’ Evil Alter trope become baked into the game, y’know?

I’m imagining 1 brain committing horrible crimes and then all the sudden it switches and becomes the other brains problem.

Antagonist status is stored on the mind. At least for stuff like Traitor. An open uplink though… Might be funny

I mean, the game is built around satire and stereotypes.

There is an evil ninja with a katana that belongs to a clan.
Police brutality jokes are everywhere in sec.
Even the lying trait (which is meant to depict a real mental disorder) is implemented in a very goofy manner.

Historically, content that could reasonably be interpreted as bigoted has been removed or changed. A great number of ion storm laws, vox box signage, roundstart vox boxes themselves when design standards for them became too speciesist, and so on - so there is precedent for WizDen not wanting harmful content in upstream SS14.

Stereotypes existing in the game does not justify carelessly adding another, but I don’t think the examples you’re using are all that good, either. I’m talking about a very widespread misconception about a condition that most people don’t know anything about beyond depictions in horror movies, while you’re talking about ninjas and cops. I don’t think real-world ninjas are harmed by the depiction of the space ninja.
You might have a point when it comes to pathological lying. I don’t suffer from that disorder, so I don’t feel comfortable weighing in there.

I guess this is down to opinion then.
I mean, how do you decide how harmful/bigoted something is when it threads this kind of line?

I feel like the line so far has been when it targets vulnerable demographics. Which seems like a good design choice.

I also want to clarify that i am only for ALLOWING such a scenario where the other mind is an antag to happen. Not that it should be the theme nor be forced to any degree.
If it happens by chance i do not see how it is any kind of stereotype. It simply can happen.
Not that it is a proper parallel to real life, since in real life there aren’t antag and non-antag roles :stuck_out_tongue:

I was also only speaking about a scenario where the other mind being an antag is forced/more likely, rather than one where it’s a normal possibility. If it’s just something that can happen, I don’t think it falls into stereotype territory. So, it looks like we’re in agreement there!

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I mean, as someone witha few plural friends, most of the time the whole nurture side of the equation is the exact same for each of them. If the front has reasons to be an Antag that have to do with memories and logic from before, then ostensibly the alter should still have them. If their Nature makes them want to rebel, all the more fun, and vice versa. I’ve been screamed at for giving criticism to people in a forum and then profusely apologized to by the next one to show. I’d weight them towards being the same alignment, but if they aren’t roundstart all bets are off.