Errant-mel

@Errant-mel

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Errant-mel
@Errant-mel
coolstation
@coolstation
trashbang
@trashbang

Space Station 14

My friend group and I have a common term we throw around: "games for sickos". It's difficult to pin down an exact definition, but you know them when you see them: complex games that are fucked up in ways that make them prickly, or inaccessible, or frictional, but also fascinating to appreciate as a designer—and if you're the right kind of fucked up, maybe enjoyable to you too. It's a positive label, but it keeps in mind that a game is not for everyone. Armored Core is a game for sickos. Guilty Gear Xrd is a game for sickos. Pathologic is a game for sickos. Dwarf Fortress is a game for sickos. Final Fantasy XI is a game for sickos. And Space Station 14 is... well, you can guess.

Back in the early 2010s I played a lot of Garry's Mod DarkRP, which introduced me to the strangely compelling concept of working a virtual job in a role-playing environment where shit hit the fan every five minutes. I remember becoming a chef, decorating my cafe with my exquisite selection of props, and annoying everyone on the server by asking for money over the counter instead of granting direct access to the magic microwave oven that generated meals. Outside my front door, pitched gun battles took place and children screamed wild accusations at each other, but I was content to just be a background character.

Space Station 14 is that, but for absolutely terminal sickos.

bruno
@bruno

So Space Station 13 (the game that Space Station 14 is an improved remake of) was made on the BYOND engine, and if you ever want to see the gritty insane underbelly of the Macromedia Dreamweaver era, go look up BYOND.

BYOND was a mid-2000s freeware game engine designed specifically for building multiplayer experiences. Think one part Bitsy, one part early Unity, one part Flash, and one part pile of decompiled Runescape netcode stolen from a dumpster behind Jagex' offices.

SS13 is by far the most elaborate thing ever built with it, but BYOND was essentially a whole treasure trove of games built in exactly these parameters: top-down, pixel art, debatably real-time multiplayer worlds for sickos and freaks who were too weird for the mainstream MMOs of the era but couldn't get with the preceding generation of MUDs and MUSHes.

Absolutely incredible era and someone needs to do a deep dive on it.

obspogon
@obspogon

i found someone who did!!!

literally just typed byondinto my address bar and firefox pulled the post deep from the depths of my history

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in reply to @trashbang's post:

mousefountain
@mousefountain

I love this shit. There's something to be said about the particular type of game for sickos that has this maximalist spectrum of stuff in it. Like usually bigger games will try to have the roles be pretty balanced out with a similar range of activities but there's something really compelling about a game where you can be a nuclear engineer or a person who just picks up trash- not because it fits some smooth and mechanically coherent grand design but because the scenario makes it feel like both those kinds of people should be there.

I always wondered if it was possible for there to be a version of space station 13 that wasn't as daunting to get started in, or if that would kind of take away the magic?

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trashbang
@trashbang

I think the key thing would be teaching players how to teach themselves. You can't infodump every facet of the game on them in a tutorial, but if you familiarise them with the tools to explore and investigate, maybe they can keep themselves afloat?

For me at least, understanding how to express the action I want via the game's interface (i.e. "how do I attach this thing to that thing?", "how do I strap this man to a stretcher?") is one of the bigger hurdles. Being conscious of my verbs, and how to access them all, would go a long way.

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mousefountain
@mousefountain

Yeah, I kind of think you can have that sort of complexity but still improve usability a lot (like having a consistent set of actions that you can try in different places) or just having really clear context actions- but I haven't played SS14.

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blambo
@blambo

I think this is more of a function of these games just requiring a brain that I don’t have, but 4x strategy games are this to me where I’m just floating along and tragic shit happens that I theoretically could have prevented but sure as hell wouldn’t know how to

Factorio hits a spot in between where I know enough to express myself and feel a little in control but not enough to completely dominate the complexity of the world. It’s extremely exhausting but just slightly more rewarding

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gatr
@gatr

a digital spaceman game with tasks and traitors.......
chief medical officer examines a small among us plush in his medbay. it's cool, they got permission for this

i love space station 14 but i have to tell myself to only play it occasionally because otherwise i know i'll just sink 12 hours at a time into it and ruin my life. it's absolutely engrossing. eventually i want to learn every job but... figuring out atmospherics might just break me.

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selenotrope
@selenotrope

the secret is almost nothing is ever necessary in atmos and when it is it's almost impossible to find the real problem until it's too late, so it is mostly just rping incompetent space firemen and theorycrafting. (which is so perfect for me)

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Toblo1
@Toblo1

Space Station 13 and it's spinoffs/contemporaries are basically the closest you'll ever get to a real life/time Sealab 2021 episode and it a fucking ride when you find the right server.

I've had AIs have existential crisis, Clowns that tried hugging the Supermatter Crystal as the ultimate joke, a greytider filled with so much meth that he started distorting space-time and a scientist that Xenobiology-ed so hard he accidently destroyed half the station when his slimes broke containment.

And only one of those stories were directly mine. It's a game where half the fun can just be watching/hearing/reading about the shenanigans about as much as it is playing it.

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stroggo
@stroggo

Ok, the first thing that crossed my mind after reading this was

But the second thing was remembering just how well SS13 struck a balance between being a perfect mundane job simulator, whilst providing a true sandbox for an extremely complex setting. I honestly don't know if there are many other games where the quality of the roleplay is so tightly joined with an enormous number of obtuse systems. And somehow it doesn't eat new players alive, my first ever round I played a literal tourist (who eventually became security chief due to my ability to recite the entire pokerap on the spot) and had an absolute blast. I can see why people have poured years into this game.

(Edit: Apologies for the GIANT image)

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halfdiamondpick
@halfdiamondpick

I had no idea that it had come so far in development. SS13 is/was some of the most formative experiences in my life, and a huge source of inspiration for how I design characters in any kind of roleplay now.

I've played every single role and done (nearly) every kind of complex system imaginable, which is what makes it all the more satisfying to play a round where you're just an annoying bureaucrat Head of Personnel. You want access to Maintenance as a clown? Okay go fetch me a coffee and a pill of tricordrazine from Chemistry and I'll approve it. NEXT!

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kstarling
@kstarling

I played it's precessor, Space Station 13, for years, like a decade ago.
Please, tell me, is atmospherics back? Can I flood compartments with nitrogen? God help me has anyone implemented the AI job again? That was my absolute favorite.

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in reply to @bruno's post:

selenotrope
@selenotrope

MU* were pretty much done by the early-mid 2000s anyway, sadly. (sicko here) I like to dream sometimes of the Ultima Online style, MU*-style alternate timeline of MMOs...

Anyway, I am shocked if there hasn't been writing done on BYOND, because surely there is a story somewhere about SS13 every couple of years.

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in reply to @obspogon's post:

raginghadron
@raginghadron

I remember one time I was act the center of a murder plot that wasn't even part of the normal antag stuff. TL;DR was that I was a pharmacist, and was pressured into making illegal drugs for a higher up. I don't remember exactly why I decided the higher-up had to go, but iirc he had started trying to use blackmail to get more drugs...

So I gave him more drugs. I knew he was using the drugs himself, so I gave him a bottle with 4 pills with the normal dosage that I had been giving him... and one pill labeled the same as the other four, but with a large enough dose of the drug to kill someone several times over.

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drmelon
@drmelon

one of my best player stories was when i got caught in a huge plasma fireball in the science lab, and managed through the flames to drag myself and my co-scientist into a mail chute and mail ourselves into medbay. just as i was congratulating myself for saving us both, i remembered that the mail chute is pneumatic, and it ejected our bodies and a gigantic fireball directly into the medical bay

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