‘Space Station 13’: Behind One of the Largest Open Source Games

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In this 2022 Open Source Game Development Summit, Nathan Riemer (a maintainer and designer for the largest SS13 fork) reveals how open source development shapes the design and production processes of a game and describes unique challenges that don’t occur in closed source development.

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76 Comments

  1. *spin *flip *Clap Good game. Also an amazing presentation from Mothblocks! 🙂

  2. As somebody that's contributed and been a member of this game's community for like 10 years, it's unreal to see it on GDC. It makes me so happy.

  3. Gotta say, Nathan has done an incredible job with this presentation. The slides are great and it was very interesting to listen! He needs to do more talks!

  4. DO NOT PLAY THIS VIDEO GAME, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED GLOWIES AHEAD.

  5. While speaking and script were really interesting, the presentation is really bland and boring
    But like overall good job mothblocks for covering good amount of stuff in such short time that you had to present

  6. What i like the most about this model is that even people with 0 coding skill can contribute, if their ideas are interesting enough and they talk with the community, someone might pick up on their idea and form it into a workable concept. A lot of things start in casual conversation between players with the typical "what if" and it leads to many things that are now staples of the game.

  7. Ha, this is a very inspiring talk for me to finish my damn contributions

  8. How about fixing some known bugs, that have been in the game for years, instead of another tasteless resprite, or making belts bulky for no reason? Thanks TG, very cool.

  9. Is it true /tg/ has a lot of drama? Im new to ss13

  10. Excellent presentation and content. Did us proud!

  11. as a relative newcomer to this game (started last year bc a friend convinced me to play it) this was veri cool

  12. You really gonna do us like that Moth, not even a mention?

  13. 1:16 pros and cons coders get angy if you out game them by any means they try to nerf it and if they cant nerf it they remove it or replace it with something shty.

  14. With the game asset discussion. Iconshare and Icon Bay were the classic place to go for sprites in byond. Though the majority of ss13 servers dont use it!

  15. Been playing this game for years and I'm glad its getting some attention! We have such an amazing and diverse community, and the game only gets better with age 🙂

  16. The funniest part of this entire thing is the fact Mothblocks was representing /TG/, the thumbnail is for Goon

  17. I adore this game. Best true roleplay experience out there

  18. Cease posting, we already have enough proles in the hub

  19. ss13 is my favorite game of all time, please do not play it, we had a popular content creator a few years ago put it on blast and we had to lock down servers for a month until the tide passed

  20. alright guys, the grey tide is incoming.

    prepare for the worst

  21. This is an awesome presentation, I love that this game is getting more attention (it deserves it), I love all the different possibilities and branches of the game, overall I LOVE THIS GAME! As a civ13 moderator I would highly encourage you to come hang out on our branch of the game, we are constantly trying to add things even tho we have a vastly smaller amount of contributors, are branch is really unique in that it is based around real life, so if you want a real survival/civilization building experience but in ss13 we are the server for you.

  22. The fact that this game is now leaking out into the real world is terrifying.

  23. I've played this on and off for over a decade, I'd love to see a talk just purely about emergent gameplay – SS13's most incredible feature.
    It's funny cos the game looks pretty hideous graphically, but more than anything else this game has moments rolling with laughter, or absolutely on knife-edge tension with heart pounding.
    Not to say that's the moment-to-moment experience, but the highs are something else. Just a masterful combination of multiplayer and emergent gameplay.

  24. Time to disregard the licence entirely and make a closed source server just for the memes.

  25. Woah.. it's weird to see SS13 get mainstream attention. I haven't touched /tg/ in years, so a lot of this is pretty cool. I make a lot of content, help code and create videos on a couple niche/closed access servers.

  26. Obligatory engagement comment. I can't stop loving the silly spacemans game

  27. This is a real fully functional metaverse – why it is not all the hype and in the news? 🙂 Looks like well organized and truly decentralized project!

  28. I love this game so much, and it’s interesting playermade changes are part of why, it’s never the exact same game and I love it

  29. Quite proud to say I contributed some of the ambience/music to this game 🙂

  30. Rather proud to say I've contributed to both TGMC and /tg/station and I still am.

  31. So glad this one came in!
    20:00 "Ah, the renowned legislator that ruined Command's day by making Nanotrasen pass that Carp-infested anti-nanite law!"
    26:16 SO FAST

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