community developed multiplayer games like SS13 and a lot of MUDs have always been fascinating to me, it's like watching someone try to code in front of a live studio audience.
what other medium can give you the experience of the guy running the show telling you all that something broke and he doesn't know why, so he's gonna disable it, reboot the server, and go to bed
ss13 has an important thing for when i get into my manic coding moments:
you can race the game.
"what does that mean?" ss13 is a round-based game. rounds last about an hour on average, but importantly they're largely controlled by player actions; they decide when to call it and end the round (with a few exceptions).
at the same time, the setup goonstation has pushes out a new server build when you push code. it takes about five minutes from push to deploy (mostly compiling).
so what ends up happening is you get an idea for something stupid or cool, and you're now racing the shuttle. you have a time to beat -- if you can finish your code, commit, and push it soon enough, it will be live for the next game.
so more than once i'll start rushing and focusing entirely on what i'm doing, doing quick test cycles as fast as i can. eventually you realize the right magic words to get everything you need as fast as possible... and when you hear the escape shuttle is en-route, you know your deadline has just dropped to a few minutes. (i'm an admin, and more than once i've put my thumb on the scale to delay it, especially if it's been only like 40 minutes or something.)
but it means that, if you can reach that deadline, you can see your changes live for people in the next few minutes. you can introduce a new feature or quality of life fix and, minutes later, observe people and how they use it. you can see what works and what doesn't, and then you have another hour to iterate on it and make the next round better.
or you miss something critical and spawn everyone a personal nuclear bomb while you sheepishly push out a fix.
it's intoxicating. i don't think you really find this sort of thing anywhere else.
but there are several times i've talked to someone, had them go "it would be really great if...", and the request is something you can reasonably fart out in 20 minutes.
ready? set? go.
