This is a PNG of the full station:
I’ve heard the controls for this are a bit more…involved than dwarf fortress. Anyone have any comments on them? The controls are largely what kept me away from dwarf fortress.
The controls are clunky, but they do make sense. I mastered the controls within a few rounds. This is coming from someone who spent hours trying to figure out DF and still hasn’t
That makes me a little more willing to give it a try, thanks for the input. I’ll be checking this out later.
Pretty much.
This seems like one of those games where it is more interesting to watch someone else play than to actually play yourself.
I was watching one video and the player is basically a worker at the DMV. He waits at some counter, players drop their ID card, he asks them what access they want, he puts their card in a machine, clicks that access, hands it back and repeats constantly for like 15 minutes.
Then he becomes a traitor and he, along with other traitors start trying to sneakily take out the normal crew while not letting them know what type of event it is until as late as possible.
The actual job part seemed mind blowingly boring, but the traitor part seemed very fun. Most of the job videos i’ve watched have been like this.
Murbella: Yes, that would be Head of Personel. It’s a great job for a traitor (if that’s the game scenario the server loaded).
And you’re right on the other account too. I’ve played about six games. Sometimes the games don’t involve me at all, sometimes I’ve been right in the middle of the madness. Thankfully, I was playing with both friendly and knowledgeable players who helped me around the interface, and because people knew sort of what was happening, the rounds were short. Twenty to thirty minutes per round. So, if I had to simplify what the game was: It’s Artemis, with Werewolf mixed in, with the time investment of a MOBA match. :)
Also, the servers I’ve been on let the player choose if he wants the opportunity to be the traitor, which I’ve left turned off. I’m not yet skilled enough to be the bad guy. So you have a little control on both the job you get and your role in the game when you join. Don’t know what job to take? Go into the character options when you join and set ‘Assistant’ to high. They are the equivalent of SS13 freebooters.
Also, in regards to the somewhat… wonky… control scheme, it would seem that BYOND is a toolkit for making online multiplayer games, and SpaceStation 13 is just one of those games. (This was not obvious to me just from reading the initial post.)
There are a few people working on a standalone version on a new engine.
It’s right here;
I’ve always thought BYOND wasn’t the right engine for this game.
No way is it, from what I’ve heard the engine is responsible for the lag.
Yeah, i completely missed that this is a MMO type thing, so yeah…not my thing at all. At least it explains much of the ‘fun’ crazy.
It’s not that you missed it, it’s that the OP forgot to write WHAT THE HECK THE GAME IS ABOUT. Like “it’s an indie multiplayer sandbox RPG about living in a space station”. There. He mentioned the space station part, and forgot including the rest.
Yup, and as much fun as I’ve had with the game in the last two days, i think I’m done unless I’m playing with friends. Either the server is overflowing with 100 plus players, half as assistants who are just griefing or screwing around, or there is just three people on the server and the game modes arent really fun. There is a really awesome game here, but random people from the internet are chasing me back to my solo play games. :)
Which server were you on? I found the goon ones to be the best. There were always at least 20 people on and most the people seemed to know enough to do what they wanted, and to stop griefing.
I usually play on the /TG/ servers. Their servers aren’t shown in the public server list, but you can find it on their website;
Heard about this game years ago and somehow never managed to try it. Gave it a few goes a month or two back and had a lot of fun with it. Finding a solid server/community to play with seems like an important part of enjoying the game. The open endedness is really cool :)
I lost a good chunk of the weekend to SS13. I like it. Of course the “Hell is other people,” can be true and can totally break a game if someone is out to wreck the experince. But when that happens usually the round will end in short order and the offending party censured. It is like playing the Paranoia RPG in hour long one shot adventures.
The depth of the game is staggering and I love the attempt of modeling everything about the station right down to atmosphere and power distribution. The engine can collapse under the weight a little sometimes especially if it is being run on a low end server. However, there are some good stable servers and they usually have a fair amount of people. I will be watching the stand alone project and see what they can do about divorcing the game from byond.
Tom M
You learned more in one weekend than I did in two weeks.
I don’t know how much I learned really. I don’t think I’ve set up the singularity generator myself successfully. My problem was getting the wires to the Particle Accelerator and PA control computer to land right. So in still learning alot of technical details. I got some info on ‘hacking’ so ill try that out and see if can successfully hotwire doors.
On the research side I’ve been trying to make sense of virology. All I’ve really been able to do there is modify some cold and flu symptoms. I worked up a vaccine once using my own antibodies, I don’t recommend that as a course of action BTW ;) , but I’ve had a problem making a vaccine since. The option isn’t there when I put a blood sample in. There must be something I am missing there.
Tom M