Space Station 13: Galactic Bartender Ep. 1

News Reader · Post by **News Reader** » July 22nd, 2010, 7:00

Space Station 13: Galactic Bartender Ep. 1
I've started investigating Space Station 13, a sci-fi multiplayer sandbox with the same utterly batshit more-is-more design as Dwarf Fortress. It uses Byond, and with that installed you can get SS13 here. The comprehensive Something Awful goon wiki can be read here and there's a big map of the station here. The game lets you [...]

Author: Quintin Smith
Category: RockPaperShotgun AAR AAR Indie Byond Space Station 13
Publish Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:00:12 +0000

I've started investigating Space Station 13, a sci-fi multiplayer sandbox with the same utterly batshit more-is-more design as Dwarf Fortress. It uses Byond, and with that installed you can get SS13 here. The comprehensive Something Awful goon wiki can be read here and there's a big map of the station here. The game lets you pick your job on the crew each game, but I've decided to shirk the responsibility of being captain, chief engineer, detective and so on to see what can be done as a humble barman. This, Episode 1, covers my first hour with the game on a sparsely populated server. This is the adventures of Galactic Bartender Gengy Patel.

Barman's log, stardate 40125.8. Dunno where to begin. I guess I should be in the bar right now instead of recording this, but the power's still down over there and I need to take a break. And find a gun. But let's start by takin' a break.

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Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

buzzmong · Post by **buzzmong** » July 22nd, 2010, 11:52

This sounds fun, I'll have a shufty later.

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » July 22nd, 2010, 12:09

im leaving to go sit in a field with a bunch of hippies for the weekend but i think ill give this a go when im back

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » July 22nd, 2010, 16:19

Ooooh, want.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » July 23rd, 2010, 10:50

Having watched some instructional type videos I can see this is a very interesting game. I'm still struggling to play though.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » July 23rd, 2010, 12:46

Multiplayer you say? downlaod tiem

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » July 24th, 2010, 1:01

This is complicatedtastic. I like it.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » July 24th, 2010, 8:27

Am I'm being dense or you can you not host your own game? If not, where are people playing?

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » July 24th, 2010, 15:33

http://www.byond.com/members/BYONDHelp? ... post=30262

RTFM

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » July 25th, 2010, 2:16

So I joined a game, unleashed a gravitational singularity on the station, smashed all solar panels, cut the power and blew a fuckton of lightbulbs, poisoned the atmosphere with a load of carbon-dioxide, changed the air mixture to 100% oxygen, blew up the toxins lab, locked the head of personnel into the VR and opened plasma canisters in the escape bay a few minutes before the shuttle arrived, all in the same round as a cyborg. And then I got banned because someone else lit the plasma on fire. Goons are weird.

Post by **Dog Pants** » July 25th, 2010, 7:56

Griefing? How sweet.

Or is that what you're supposed to do?

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » July 25th, 2010, 8:50

Dog Pants wrote:Or is that what you're supposed to do?

If you're a traitor you're supposed to do your best to sabotage the station and not get caught. The most exciting thing I've managed to do is hit a monkey with an empty box. This game is very not easy to play.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » July 25th, 2010, 10:00

I refuse to play with Goons. I know there's a lot of them and they by no means all twunts, but the ones I've met [in Eve] have set a bad enough impression that I never want to have anything to do with them.

So I'll only ever play this if we can host our own server

Post by **Dog Pants** » July 25th, 2010, 10:07

spoodie wrote: If you're a traitor you're supposed to do your best to sabotage the station and not get caught. The most exciting thing I've managed to do is hit a monkey with an empty box. This game is very not easy to play.

Ah right. From Bali being banned and the guy in the article being a bartender I'd got the impression it was supposed to be cooperative. In that case, great work!

friznit · Post by **friznit** » July 25th, 2010, 10:51

From what I can gather there is a variety of different game modes, the most popular of which atm appears to be "random"

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » July 25th, 2010, 12:52

Almost all gamemodes revolve around someone or someones being a traitor, really, so there's not much variation really. A cyborg cannot be a traitor, so yes, it was intentional griefing.

Let me put it this way, the game is sort of boring if everyone does their job, because then there's really nothing to do. If I release a singularity, some maintenance people need to check and seal off damaged areas, if it reaches the solar arrays, an engineer needs to rebuild the platform and rewire the remaining panels or it will reach atmos. If I flood the station with some sort of gas, atmos techs need to reset the mixture, shut off the pumps, monitor the quality of air mixture in sampling tank, and janitors need to bring out the air scrubbers. I'm just giving people jobs really.

As for gamemodes:
Changeling - same as traitor, but with shapeshifters
Nuke - traitors have a nuke, they must get the "disk" from the captain and detonate the nuke.
Revolution - same as traitor, except initial traitors can convert normal people to revolutionaries
Traitor - bunch of random people must kill/steal/destroy then escape on the shuttle
Wizard - one traitor, who is a wizard, goal is to murder an exceptionally high amount of people then escape on the shuttle

friznit · Post by **friznit** » July 25th, 2010, 17:16

How to run your own server:

1. Download the latest released code build (latest revision before dev was released) here: http://blackmage.org/supernorn/Public.rar
2. Run the dme and compile it first of all (to ensure the .dmb is up to date)
3. Then run Dream Daemon (you will find this in the BYOND folder)
4. Go to file -> open -> find the dmb
5. Set your server settings (if you want to just mess around by yourself you can skip this)
6. Click go
7. Go to world -> join to join it

Note again: The version listed above is from March 2010. Just before Dev was released.

How to add yourself as an admin:

Open admins.txt in the config folder
The format is as follows:
byond key - rank
Your byond key must be in lower case with no spaces.

Gonna give this a shot now.

friznit · Post by **friznit** » July 25th, 2010, 17:41

I seem to have managed a private server. No idea if anyone can connect to it though.

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » July 25th, 2010, 22:13

Pop me an IP and I'll test it.

Post by **Dog Pants** » July 26th, 2010, 7:46

Sounds like The Ship.