‘Space Station 13’: Behind One of the Largest Open Source Games
GDC
28827
1166
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.
Head to GDC Vault () for the latest video-on-demand sessions from GDC 2022—with several GDC videos available to watch for free!
Join the GDC mailing list:
Follow GDC on Twitter:
GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every day. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives.
07.02.2023
![Space Battle (Crazy Games) [Free Games]](https://spacecowsgame.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/xpokihq-yaimaxresdefault-1024x576.jpg)
me like
Well that's unexpected.
*spin *flip *Clap Good game. Also an amazing presentation from Mothblocks! 🙂
Hey hey people, Sseth here
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.
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!
we like moffblocks
I didn't imagine MB to sound like this
Very nicely delivered presentation.
DO NOT PLAY THIS VIDEO GAME, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED GLOWIES AHEAD.
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
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.
Ha, this is a very inspiring talk for me to finish my damn contributions
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.
Woa woa, why is this here?
gamer moment
Is it true /tg/ has a lot of drama? Im new to ss13
Excellent presentation and content. Did us proud!
CMSS13 GANG REPRESENT!!!
as a relative newcomer to this game (started last year bc a friend convinced me to play it) this was veri cool
HONK!11!!
Booo
gaming
So how about that singularity re-addition
S S E T H T I D E W O R L D W I D E
You really gonna do us like that Moth, not even a mention?
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.
So true mothblocks
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!
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 🙂
The funniest part of this entire thing is the fact Mothblocks was representing /TG/, the thumbnail is for Goon
Yuck, at least goon looks good…
I adore this game. Best true roleplay experience out there
Cease posting, we already have enough proles in the hub
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
alright guys, the grey tide is incoming.
prepare for the worst
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.
♥
The fact that this game is now leaking out into the real world is terrifying.
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.
Cool.
Time to disregard the licence entirely and make a closed source server just for the memes.
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.
Obligatory engagement comment. I can't stop loving the silly spacemans game
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!
That's the guy that removed nanites! Get em!
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
Quite proud to say I contributed some of the ambience/music to this game 🙂
Rather proud to say I've contributed to both TGMC and /tg/station and I still am.
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