Current Freezes and PR restrictions

[wrexbe]

This is a list of things that are "frozen" or "restricted". See below for what each term means.

Freezes

PRs involving any of these things may be closed at maintainer discretion until the freeze is resolved.
If the freeze is due to an ongoing rework then the rework PR will take precedent and your PR may require reworking prior to merge.
As usual your PR is subject to not being merged into the repository, especially if maintainer approval is not sought beforehand.

• New songs (lobby, jukebox etc) -
  
  • Any new songs will need to wait until a streaming system is implemented for them to be merged.
• New lobby art - We got enough at the moment but if you have a good one ask an art director on Discord for approval first
• Guns - Seek maintainer approval beforehand. (Ping @metalgearsloth and @DrSmugleaf)
• Clothing variants for mobs - Inconsistently maintaining a lot of clothing sprite variants for species/mobs is not feasible and could have big long-term consequences. Variants will not be accepted until we support displacement masks (unless the variants have a good reason to be or a maintainer approved them). This freeze wont apply for maintaining current variants (like monkey suits).
  • Certain species-specific sprites are fine if they can't be displacement mapped.
  • It is fine for existing round-start species.
• New pet clothing - These need to use displacement maps. Gas tank sprites are still allowed.
• New pets. While fluff is nice we have enough cargo-obtainable fluff animals and department mascots, to add new animals they must have something interesting like new AI behaviors or spawn in proc gen maps.
• Roundstart clothing / fluff clothing - We have too much clothing right now and can't just add this stuff willy-nilly anymore without degrading visual design standards. We need clothing guidelines to be created to remove this freeze. With how all-encompassing this is, there will obviously have to be some exceptions. This mainly applies to stuff like new alternate jumpsuits. Ask an art director for conceptual approval if you aren't sure.
• Wizard - Needs a design doc. (@keronshb is currently working on this.)
• Magic/Spells/Spellbook - Currently refactoring & adding new ones (@keronshb is currently working on this.)
• Roundstart / player species such as lizards / humans - There currently no maintainer conscious on what the "minimum" requirements for a round start species is. And as such we decided to freeze them until the species workgroup has been designed.
• New AI laws or lawsets - We had a huge influx of law addition proposals, but need to implement and decide some basics first. See Requirements for unfreezing AI law changes #31924
• Other silicon law changes or additions - Please first write a design doc including an analysis how your proposed law changes/additions are to be interpreted by players and admins, how they fit into the server rules and how they improve the game.
• New Roletimers - We need to rebalance our current roletimers and adding any more adds to this load
• Chatcode - PRs involving chatcode or adding/changing formatting functionality are at risk of being closed due to impacting refactoring chatcode.

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Restrictions

PRs surrounding any items in these list will be heavily scrutinized or require a design doc, taking longer to be reviewed.
Consult a maintainer when making a PR involving these things.

• Antagonists - We have had code quality issues with these and the code will be scrutinised much more heavily than normal. (Requires a design doc before being implemented)
• Anything touching medical (reagents, entities, etc) due to woundmed coming - Any changes may not be re-implemented in the initial woundmed PR, but can be readded later by each PR author.
• Recipes - More of a PSA that microwave recipes are subject to potential deletion in future pending chef refactor.
• EMAG INTERACTIONS - we have too many and need to cut down. Needs a design doc.
• Item Balance - These will be scrutinized heavily.

[metalgearsloth]

Antags - We haven't actually had a meeting since I proposed it so it's tentatively here.
Reason is people work on a new antag (gameplay for one person occasionally) instead of job content (gameplay actively in every round for several players) so we continue our spiral of having no job content for departments like science. Fixing an existing antag is okay.

[Injazz]

xenosci was merged so consider lifting freeze from research

[keronshb]

Restoring the antag freeze.

[metalgearsloth]

does borging count as species i wanna try it

We're discussing freezes more in discord but no. Borgs need to use body system though.

[keronshb]

Added Wizard since it still would require Mind Entities and the highest scrutiny.

[Boaz1111]

Regarding the freeze on weapons, would a PR making certain weapons(musket, etc.) obtainable via a research be frozen?

[VasilisThePikachu]

I fat-fingered remove, don't mind me

[Everturning]

@wrexbe loadouts have been in for a while now will you edit the roundstart clothing thing

[VasilisThePikachu]

@wrexbe loadouts have been in for a while now will you edit the roundstart clothing thing

I can do it. Maints can edit issues.

I will ask first. So one moment

[Golinth]

Variants will not be accepted until we support displacement masks

Should clothing variants for mobs be removed from the freeze, now that we support displacement maps?