[HN Gopher] Space Station 14 - Open-source remake of Space Stati... ___________________________________________________________________ Space Station 14 - Open-source remake of Space Station 13 Author : nonbirithm Score : 211 points Date : 2021-11-04 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (spacestation14.io) (TXT) w3m dump (spacestation14.io) | ajvs wrote: | No SS13 discussion is complete without linking to | SsethTzeentach's infamous absurd-sounding review[1] or | MandaloreGaming's slightly less infamous but more informational | review[2]. | | [1] https://youtu.be/URJ_qSXruW0 [2] https://youtu.be/nLAHBexJxrE | gambiting wrote: | I literally opened the comments to post these two links, but | clearly there are other people here who enjoy these two exact | channels already :D | Ralfp wrote: | My opinion on SsethTzeentach changed when guy did two and half | hours long presentation (and Q&A) on current state of and | ongoing developments in oncology. | | It was a joke, but apparently this is his real field of | expertise and YouTube edgelord persona is what he does to wind | down after work. | | Here's recording of stream in question, potentially offensive | and NSFW jokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsRVQWfqjms | dj_mc_merlin wrote: | I always knew he was putting on half a persona for the videos | but seeing him talk about advanced serious topics in _that_ | voice is genuinely surreal. | 5faulker wrote: | This has to be the bomb. | 1_player wrote: | And Black Pants Legion [1] for some very fun playthroughs of | the game. Hail Cargonia! | | 1: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHweuFtIS-M&list=PLR5zhFCFVb... | chaps wrote: | Hail Cargonia. | ameminator wrote: | Rumor has it that SsethTzeentach and Mandalore are the same | person, but we will never know for sure. The audience can only | listen to the voice and make their own conclusions. | Ralfp wrote: | This is only a meme. | | Sseth is based in EU (and makes little secret on that), | Mandalore is in US. | gambiting wrote: | Voice aside, I think it's unlikely purely because Mandalore | is an absolute upload machine, he makes very high quality | content and uploads regularly. Sseth less so lately, but the | games he plays require _insane_ investment of time and | effort. Like, yeah, there was 4 month gap between the Amazing | Cultivation Simulator video and the one before it, but having | watched it it 's obvious why(in fact I'm impressed it _only_ | took him 4 months). Mandalore usually plays games to | completion, but doesn 't get so incredibly deep onto them as | Sseth does. | rackjack wrote: | Dr. Mandalore and Mr. Sseth | beaconstudios wrote: | isn't space station 13 infamously cursed when it comes to | remakes? There have been numerous attempts over the years (mainly | because SS13 is built in a terrible unmaintained closed-source | engine with a custom language) but all have failed because SS13 | is so mechanically dense. | gaogao wrote: | On an engine that makes PHP look like a paragon of good design | MrStonedOne wrote: | a compiled language with a function call overhead higher then | php? it could only be byond. | Ygg2 wrote: | As much as any attempt to rewrite is cursed. | | Funny enough RobustToolbox also is being used to port existing | codebases to C# [0]. | | This way old codebases can keep using DMI, and use CEF instead | of Internet Explorer. | | [0] https://github.com/wixoaGit/OpenDream | AngryData wrote: | Yes, it has been so far, but this project has progressed much | farther and steadily than most every other attempt. The sheer | amount of features is astounding though, and highly varied | among the different servers and codebases. | ajvs wrote: | Curse seems to be over thanks to the progress in SS14 as well | as Unitystation[1] which is slightly further along. Whilst not | as featureful as /tg/ they have enough content to support | several antagonists and most departments. | | [1] https://github.com/unitystation/unitystation | rackjack wrote: | Yep. I'll believe the curse is over when Goon/tg/etc. get some | servers running on SS14/Unitystation for at least a year. | nonbirithm wrote: | Evidently so. I'm not quite up to speed, but ever since SS13 | was first created there have been maybe a dozen attempts to | move it off of BYOND: SS14, SS3D, RE:SS3D, UnityStation, | Griefly, Bluespess... | | I do remember stumbling across this issue[1] by one of the lead | developers of SS14 calling out one of the devs of another | project. I think it illustrates that the stories of people | trying to remake SS13 alone are numerous and fraught with | tension at times. But it speaks volumes about how passionate | many individuals are about this specific game. | | There is also this very interesting writeup[2] by another SS14 | dev about four years ago about how the project got started. | | Also interesting about SS14 in particular is that they use a | completely custom engine called RobustToolbox, written in C#. | This was after trying to use SFML, scrapping everything, and | eventually spending a year "waiting for Godot", in someone | else's words. One of the devs apparently spent two years mostly | learning OpenGL just to finish the engine. | | [1] https://github.com/Bluespess/tgstation-remake/issues/76 | | [2] | https://www.reddit.com/r/ss14/comments/5k3tkl/comment/dbo633... | smoldesu wrote: | SS13 will always have a special place in my juvenile heart, and | while I probably wouldn't play it today, I'm glad it's being | remade. Supposedly the game performs very poorly under Wine, so | having a good native version seems imperative for keeping cross- | platform play alive. | | If you've never played SS13, by the way, you are the ideal | candidate to pick it up and play a few rounds. It's mechanics are | highly complex and intertwined: some players are wrapped up in a | social sim, while others engage in sabotage. Many players are | charged with keeping the peace, others are told to sow discomfort | among crew members. The whole thing comes together in a | beautifully elaborate machine where all sorts of crazy social | situations crop up. Everyone is out for themselves, and that | relentlessly petty style of gameplay is what got me hooked when I | had nothing more than a Pentium and DSL. | GhettoComputers wrote: | This sounds a lot like a free EVE online. Looks fun, that era | of space games was great, I remember I didn't have consistent | internet and played EV Nova a lot. | Aromasin wrote: | I wouldn't say it's anything like Eve if I'm honest. More | like Among Us with Dwarf Fortress levels of complexity. | tmpmoony wrote: | Poorly is unfortunately an understatement. BYOND itself works | fine, but BYOND uses Internet Explorer (great) for game UIs, | and many newer SS13 codebases use something called TGUI. TGUI | requires IE11, and Wine does not support that, so as a | consequence most codebases are simply unplayable. | PJB3005 wrote: | Even without the need for IE11, BYOND is nigh unusable on | Wine. It runs extremely poorly due to extreme and poor usage | of Win32 UI stuff. | | There appears to be some form of resource leak in BYOND which | causes its Ui system to gradually slow down the longer you're | playing. This is severely amplified by presumably Wine being | less optimized than Windows in these areas. It means that | after just ~15 minutes of playing the client will starts | stuttering severely on Wine. Then you need to restart the | client which can take 2-3 minutes depending on how broken | BYOND's ad loading wants to be. (This also happens on Windows | but the effect is MUCH slower so you can go hours without | noticing). | smoldesu wrote: | I remember getting it to work reasonably well with some | heavy-handed tinkering, but it was definitely never at a | fully playable state on Linux. The remake utterly flies | though, so I have hopes that they'll continue development! | andrecarini wrote: | > If you've never played SS13, by the way, you are the ideal | candidate to pick it up and play a few rounds. | | I'd recommend otherwise. The community is extremely toxic and | moderators assume everyone have bad intentions. Feels like | working with your boss breathing down your neck. | Talanes wrote: | I've never even had a moderator talk to me, much less assume | anything about my intentions. Different servers will have | different cultures. | kwolff wrote: | It's cool and all, SS13 is a very fun game, but at this point the | game itself is simply too big and the community is too small for | it to get a proper remake. | | Anyone who frequently plays it will be disappointed by SS14 in | the lack of features that the TG-Station fork of SS13 provides. | TG-Station has been in development for a very long time. | Replicating that work would require a sizable team of dedicated | developers, and it'd still take years. | | This will unfortunately peter out like every other SS13 remake. | Old players and devs won't move, and if some of them do they have | too many options to pick from. The prospect of many new players | is unlikely, with the exception of the occasional highlight of | the game by a popular youtube creator. | | Don't get me wrong, the game is great, and I'd love a proper port | that doesn't rely on Internet Explorer, but it's extremely | unlikely to happen. | tmpmoony wrote: | Hey, one of SS14's game admins/contributors here. We've been | hearing this for 4 years and it hasn't happened yet, so I don't | see what exactly you're getting at when we're moving through | development faster than ever and adding new stuff constantly. | Also, we're not a remake of /tg/station and I have not a clue | where you get that impression, we like functionality and | spritework from many codebases, and have put our own spin on | many things as well. | PJB3005 wrote: | We've[0] been at it for 4 years. As Moony already said, | development has been faster than ever recently. We've gotten | decently consistent player counts now over the past month, and | just a few days ago a Twitch streamer Bikeman streamed SS14 to | 1,500 viewers (peak)[1]. | | We may only have 15% of the content of an SS13 codebase but I | like to think that we have enough merits like a less laggy | engine to make up for that. | | I can say confidently that we have _definitely_ broken the | curse and short of a suspicious series of bus accidents across | the EU, US and AU, nothing can stop us now. | | [0]: (current "iteration", SS14's code dates back to 2011 at | LEAST). [1]: | https://twitter.com/BikeMan/status/1455385097671254018 | throwaway2331 wrote: | PJB is going to be the Lennart Poettering of BYOND soon | enough. | | 4 years is a long time. | | Man's on a mission. | munk-a wrote: | The first real programming project I worked on that wasn't just | a greenfield toy was maintaining a MUD. In the MUD community | you tend to have 2-3 devs per MUD which is usually about 5% of | the DAU. The code is insanely old and crusty but people | maintain it because they want to keep it alive. You ain't seen | crusty until you've seen Diku. | | Things happen because people care - a lot of people care | passionately about SS13 and, while it may take quite some time | (and while SS14 may not be it) I'm pretty sure there will be a | SS13 remake eventually. | skeaker wrote: | The development cycle for SS13 works entirely off of random | contributors throwing up PRs simply because they want to. | Hundreds of contributors, thousands of PRs, and tens of | thousands of comments and feedback on those PRs is what keeps | the game constantly moving and updating on a multiple-times- | per-day basis. Normally I would agree with you that this kind | of development could never be matched, but SS14 seems to be | taking the same approach of being very accepting to any | developer who wishes to contribute even slightly. I think that | that's the sort of approach that will make it work out in the | long run. | MrStonedOne wrote: | /tg/station will have our own fork of ss14 soon enough. | Ygg2 wrote: | Disclaimer: Contributor to SS14. Added cigs and refactored some | stuff. | | Gonna heavy disagree with it. | | The thing is porting big games takes time. And SS13 isn't even | like a single game. It's several dueling codebases. | | Not to mention SS14 is more ambitious than that: make your own | engine, plus add pixel movement, grid rotation, etc. | | And SS14 is at a playable alpha. And I mean actual alpha, not | Blizzard polish alpha. | | Like people discovered you can grab and throw the station - | alpha. And there is a man with a suitcase full of talking | brains , because brains have a communication component. | | We have enough people for playtests weekly. | | > Old players and devs won't move | | That's pretty strange to claim, when we had influx of coders | from other codebases. Granted not all will like the new code | base, but some do. | a_t48 wrote: | > Like people discovered you can grab and throw the station - | alpha. And there is a man with a suitcase full of talking | brains , because brains have a communication component. | | This feels like a classic SS13 bug, business as usual, | really. | tmpmoony wrote: | I think they got the station throwing a bit wrong, I | actually had to modify the game slightly to remove a sanity | check in hands code to pull it off. Was very funny though. | Ygg2 wrote: | Maybe, but brains talking one was from playtest. Really | old one. | atleta wrote: | Please consider using tar.gz for the Linux download as ZIP | does not store the file permissions and thus the game won't | start. The SS14.Launcher should probably be an executable, | which itself is a shell script trying to start | bin/SS14.Launcher . The shell script can be started without | it being marked as an executable but it will fail when it | tries to execute bin/SS14.Launcher. I also had to set the | execute bit on bin/loader/SS14.Launcher as otherwise the game | would throw an exception after trying to connect to a server. | | System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (13): Permission denied | at System.Diagnostics.Process.ForkAndExecProcess(String | filename, String[] argv, String[] envp, String cwd, Boolean | redirectStdin, Boolean redirectStdout, Boolean | redirectStderr, Boolean setCredentials, UInt32 userId, UInt32 | groupId, UInt32[] groups, Int32& stdinFd, Int32& stdoutFd, | Int32& stderrFd, Boolean usesTerminal, Boolean throwOnNoExec) | tmpmoony wrote: | This is a problem with your choice of unzip (Midnight | Commander according to the issue) tool, nobody else seems | to have this issue. Maybe report an issue to them instead? | wetpaws wrote: | Also a contributor, given how my PRs are handled, i don't | expect SS14 to have feature parity with SS13 anytime till | 2100. | malkia wrote: | Haven't played Space Station, but somehow got the nice memories | of playing Space Quest - | https://www.google.com/search?q=space+quest+game - where the main | character Roger Wilco, is a janitor on a spaceship. | GordonS wrote: | Man, I used to _love_ all those "Quest" games! | | Some of my favourites were Space Quest, The Colonels Bequest, | and one I forget the name of, which was set in medieval England | (it _might_ have been called "Heroes Quest?). | | I also liked the Leisure Suit Larry series, which weren't | "Quest" games, but AFAICT used the same engine. | the_af wrote: | > _[...] and one I forget the name of, which was set in | medieval England (it might have been called "Heroes Quest?)_ | | That'd be Sierra's _Hero 's Quest: So You Want To Be A Hero_, | later renamed to _Quest for Glory_ because "Hero Quest" is a | trademark of Games Workshop. | | The sequels included other settings, for example the Arabian | Nights. | GordonS wrote: | Yes, I think that's it! If I recall correctly, some of the | game was set in the Middle East too, though I might be | confusing it with another game in the series. | | I really need to try and download these golden oldies from | somewhere and have a nostalgia-fest! | Moru wrote: | Seems GOG has them: | | https://www.gog.com/game/quest_for_glory | digikata wrote: | That brings back memories of Infocom's Planetfall where you | were a janitor on a space station. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetfall | Arrath wrote: | I've played SS13 off on and for a number of years, and it can | have some truly sublime moments. | | The SomethingAwful forums have some spectacular tales of | shenanigans and bugs and the two combining together to become | more than the sum of their parts. | ajvs wrote: | For those who don't know, SS13 is an open-source multiplayer | round-based roleplaying game that has been built on the closed- | source BYOND engine since 2005. Imagine Among Us, DarkRP (on | Garry's Mod) or NoPixel (on GTA V) but with much more content for | both antagonists and normal workers. Or Dwarf Fortress/RimWorld | but everybody controls a different person (with usual crew count | being 50-150 people). | | It has a great number of forks, with more than a dozen focused on | the space station gameplay loop and various others that adapt the | game to themes such as marines vs xenomorphs missions, an open- | world modern day city setting, ancient civilization world, etc. | | Other than that if you want to find out more I'd suggest watching | the two most popular game reviews about it I added in another | comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29109264 | aspaceman wrote: | It also has a very long (and silly) dev history. I don't know | it very well, but wasn't the source code stolen at some point? | Then several forks that did and did not include that code? Or | is that just source from the SomethingAwful fork? | fragileone wrote: | It was rumoured to be stolen for a long time, but the | original developer of SS13 (Exadv1) said in an interview that | no theft took place, and he'd voluntarily given the code to | fellow programmers[1]. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP5t1b1TKQg | skeaker wrote: | This is true, but there still has been drama with the | ownership of the source code in the past. The Goon fork | that has always been one of the biggest forks but is also | closed source has leaked on a few separate occasions, for | example. | WalterGR wrote: | For others who had never heard of it, here's Space Station 13 on | Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_13 | rackjack wrote: | BTW Byond, the platform that hosts Space Station 13, looks like | malware but (probably) isn't. | balthasar wrote: | You beat me to it! | MrStonedOne wrote: | As the guy running all the servers for /tg/station 13 I am | feeling feelings of confusion, fear, and anger at this new and | confusing lack of tiles | LogonType10 wrote: | Are new players welcome? | MrStonedOne wrote: | We receive high double digit new players every single day on | /tg/station's servers. Most don't make it past a week due to | the high learning curve but we would not be sustainable | without the consistent influx of fresh minds to be amazed by | the depth of the game, as the biggest source of drop off for | people who make it past the first week is people who've | learned all the advanced mechanics and had their emergent | gameplay moments ("wait, you can do that?"). | smoldesu wrote: | Nope, but that's why you should play anyways :) | rackjack wrote: | SS13 is, IMO, an inherently newbie-unfriendly game. However, | there are servers and new players guides online, for Goon | (one group of servers) and tg (another group of servers), and | probably others that I'm not familiar with. | 83457 wrote: | Misread and thought this was somehow Space Channel 5 related :( | ginko wrote: | I'm sure you can have a dance off against space aliens in ss13 | fossuser wrote: | I love that I can be pretty 'wired in' to HN, tech twitter, etc. | and still find cool stuff like this that's been around for years | and I've never heard of before. | | It looks like a pretty cool game, I'm surprised I've never heard | of SS13 given all of I've seen about Dwarf Fortress. | smoldesu wrote: | FWIW, the Venn-diagram of "Twitter users" and "Space Station 13 | Players" are just two, separate circles. | beaconstudios wrote: | Yeah SS13 is more of a 4chan /tg/ thing. Twitter is the last | place you'll find old hidden treasures. | giantrobot wrote: | Nintendo Hidden Gem: Legend of Zelda Link to the Past! | Smash that like button fellow gamers! | BbzzbB wrote: | Twitter is reputation/persona-centric rather than | topic/subforum-centric, it is what you make it to be. I | don't really venture outside of fin-Twitter, but I'd bet | there are fantastic accounts focused on sharing old hidden | treasures. | | While not quite this sort of old treasure, take for example | twitter.com/TechEmails, I've learned of a bunch of 15-25 | year old stories and anecdotes through some of his posts | that I wouldn't have otherwise heard of. | MrStonedOne wrote: | I found ss13 from a roommate who found ss13 from twitter. | TeaDude wrote: | I've played a bit of this before around a year ago and was | suitably impressed (even if you couldn't play a round yet and | most items were just non-functional sprites you could pick up) | | Looks like they've added a lot more in the meantime! | tmpmoony wrote: | Game's fully playable now, though heavily reliant on roleplay. | We usually tend between 10-30 players all day in the US at the | minute. | swarnie wrote: | Hey hey people, Sseth here. | prohobo wrote: | Thank god! I was worried this project was cursed, and I really | want SS13 to live on. It's one of the last bastions of true | multiplayer gaming, and it's such a deep and funny experience to | play. Honestly I want SS13 to be around when I'm elderly, and the | Byond engine is just holding it back. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-11-04 23:00 UTC)