4 ms·

It's cool and all, SS13 is a very fun game, but at this point the game itself is simply too big and the community is too small for it to get a proper remake. A

by kwolff 5y ago

It's cool and all, SS13 is a very fun game, but at this point the game itself is simply too big and the community is too small for it to get a proper remake. Anyone who frequently plays it will be disappointed by SS14 in the lack of features that the TG-Station fork of SS13 provides. TG-Station has been in development for a very long time. Replicating that work would require a sizable team of dedicated developers, and it'd still take years. This will unfortunately peter out like every other SS13 remake. Old players and devs won't move, and if some of them do they have too many options to pick from. The prospect of many new players is unlikely, with the exception of the occasional highlight of the game by a popular youtube creator. Don't get me wrong, the game is great, and I'd love a proper port that doesn't rely on Internet Explorer, but it's extremely unlikely to happen.

tmpmoony 5y ago
Hey, one of SS14's game admins/contributors here. We've been hearing this for 4 years and it hasn't happened yet, so I don't see what exactly you're getting at when we're moving through development faster than ever and adding new stuff constantly. Also, we're not a remake of /tg/station and I have not a clue where you get that impression, we like functionality and spritework from many codebases, and have put our own spin on many things as well.
MrStonedOne 5y ago
/tg/station will have our own fork of ss14 soon enough.
Ygg2 5y ago
Disclaimer: Contributor to SS14. Added cigs and refactored some stuff. Gonna heavy disagree with it. The thing is porting big games takes time. And SS13 isn't even like a single game. It's several dueling codebases. Not to mention SS14 is more ambitious than that: make your own engine, plus add pixel movement, grid rotation, etc. And SS14 is at a playable alpha. And I mean actual alpha, not Blizzard polish alpha. Like people discovered you can grab and throw the station - alpha. And there is a man with a suitcase full of talking brains , because brains have a communication component. We have enough people for playtests weekly. > Old players and devs won't move That's pretty strange to claim, when we had influx of coders from other codebases. Granted not all will like the new code base, but some do.
- atleta 5y ago
  Please consider using tar.gz for the Linux download as ZIP does not store the file permissions and thus the game won't start. The SS14.Launcher should probably be an executable, which itself is a shell script trying to start bin/SS14.Launcher . The shell script can be started without it being marked as an executable but it will fail when it tries to execute bin/SS14.Launcher. I also had to set the execute bit on bin/loader/SS14.Launcher as otherwise the game would throw an exception after trying to connect to a server. System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (13): Permission denied at System.Diagnostics.Process.ForkAndExecProcess(String filename, String[] argv, String[] envp, String cwd, Boolean redirectStdin, Boolean redirectStdout, Boolean redirectStderr, Boolean setCredentials, UInt32 userId, UInt32 groupId, UInt32[] groups, Int32& stdinFd, Int32& stdoutFd, Int32& stderrFd, Boolean usesTerminal, Boolean throwOnNoExec)
  - tmpmoony 5y ago
    This is a problem with your choice of unzip (Midnight Commander according to the issue) tool, nobody else seems to have this issue. Maybe report an issue to them instead?
    - atleta 5y ago
      Right, as it turns out it was because Midnight Commander doesn't handle the non-standard extension Info-ZIP uses to store the file attributes. Whether others have this issue, you don't know. And they don't know, which is not surprising given the rude tone they (or you) reacted to my report. Also, I was actually using a pretty popular app to quickly unpack the archive, so it's more like SS14's problem than MC's. Simply because they are bigger and more wide spread. (Not saying that it wouldn't be nice if they improved their ZIP file handling.) Anyway, tar.gz is without any doubt the most obvious and safest bet if you are targeting unix systems.
- a_t48 5y ago
  > Like people discovered you can grab and throw the station - alpha. And there is a man with a suitcase full of talking brains , because brains have a communication component. This feels like a classic SS13 bug, business as usual, really.
munk-a 5y ago
The first real programming project I worked on that wasn't just a greenfield toy was maintaining a MUD. In the MUD community you tend to have 2-3 devs per MUD which is usually about 5% of the DAU. The code is insanely old and crusty but people maintain it because they want to keep it alive. You ain't seen crusty until you've seen Diku. Things happen because people care - a lot of people care passionately about SS13 and, while it may take quite some time (and while SS14 may not be it) I'm pretty sure there will be a SS13 remake eventually.
PJB3005 5y ago
We've[0] been at it for 4 years. As Moony already said, development has been faster than ever recently. We've gotten decently consistent player counts now over the past month, and just a few days ago a Twitch streamer Bikeman streamed SS14 to 1,500 viewers (peak)[1]. We may only have 15% of the content of an SS13 codebase but I like to think that we have enough merits like a less laggy engine to make up for that. I can say confidently that we have definitely broken the curse and short of a suspicious series of bus accidents across the EU, US and AU, nothing can stop us now. [0]: (current "iteration", SS14's code dates back to 2011 at LEAST). [1]: https://twitter.com/BikeMan/status/1455385097671254018 https://twitter.com/BikeMan/status/1455385097671254018
- throwaway2331 5y ago
  PJB is going to be the Lennart Poettering of BYOND soon enough. 4 years is a long time. Man's on a mission.
skeaker 5y ago
The development cycle for SS13 works entirely off of random contributors throwing up PRs simply because they want to. Hundreds of contributors, thousands of PRs, and tens of thousands of comments and feedback on those PRs is what keeps the game constantly moving and updating on a multiple-times-per-day basis. Normally I would agree with you that this kind of development could never be matched, but SS14 seems to be taking the same approach of being very accepting to any developer who wishes to contribute even slightly. I think that that's the sort of approach that will make it work out in the long run.
bankshake 5y ago
Edit: I apologize. They didn't deserve that. I'm having a bad day Hey guy, how's it feel to be a piece of shit? Imagining working your ass off on something, making incredible progress, and reading some asshole in the internet with psychic powers tell you "this will push out like the rest", even though it's literally nothing like the rest Nothing you said was true, side from that remakes have had issues in the past. You're talking completely out of your ass. Being negative know it all and trying to drag people down. "You will" go fuck yourself.

by kwolff 5y ago

tmpmoony 5y ago

Hey, one of SS14's game admins/contributors here. We've been hearing this for 4 years and it hasn't happened yet, so I don't see what exactly you're getting at when we're moving through development faster than ever and adding new stuff constantly. Also, we're not a remake of /tg/station and I have not a clue where you get that impression, we like functionality and spritework from many codebases, and have put our own spin on many things as well.

MrStonedOne 5y ago

/tg/station will have our own fork of ss14 soon enough.

Ygg2 5y ago

Disclaimer: Contributor to SS14. Added cigs and refactored some stuff. Gonna heavy disagree with it. The thing is porting big games takes time. And SS13 isn't even like a single game. It's several dueling codebases. Not to mention SS14 is more ambitious than that: make your own engine, plus add pixel movement, grid rotation, etc. And SS14 is at a playable alpha. And I mean actual alpha, not Blizzard polish alpha. Like people discovered you can grab and throw the station - alpha. And there is a man with a suitcase full of talking brains , because brains have a communication component. We have enough people for playtests weekly. > Old players and devs won't move That's pretty strange to claim, when we had influx of coders from other codebases. Granted not all will like the new code base, but some do.

atleta 5y ago
Please consider using tar.gz for the Linux download as ZIP does not store the file permissions and thus the game won't start. The SS14.Launcher should probably be an executable, which itself is a shell script trying to start bin/SS14.Launcher . The shell script can be started without it being marked as an executable but it will fail when it tries to execute bin/SS14.Launcher. I also had to set the execute bit on bin/loader/SS14.Launcher as otherwise the game would throw an exception after trying to connect to a server. System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (13): Permission denied at System.Diagnostics.Process.ForkAndExecProcess(String filename, String[] argv, String[] envp, String cwd, Boolean redirectStdin, Boolean redirectStdout, Boolean redirectStderr, Boolean setCredentials, UInt32 userId, UInt32 groupId, UInt32[] groups, Int32& stdinFd, Int32& stdoutFd, Int32& stderrFd, Boolean usesTerminal, Boolean throwOnNoExec)
- tmpmoony 5y ago
  This is a problem with your choice of unzip (Midnight Commander according to the issue) tool, nobody else seems to have this issue. Maybe report an issue to them instead?
  - atleta 5y ago
    Right, as it turns out it was because Midnight Commander doesn't handle the non-standard extension Info-ZIP uses to store the file attributes. Whether others have this issue, you don't know. And they don't know, which is not surprising given the rude tone they (or you) reacted to my report. Also, I was actually using a pretty popular app to quickly unpack the archive, so it's more like SS14's problem than MC's. Simply because they are bigger and more wide spread. (Not saying that it wouldn't be nice if they improved their ZIP file handling.) Anyway, tar.gz is without any doubt the most obvious and safest bet if you are targeting unix systems.
a_t48 5y ago
> Like people discovered you can grab and throw the station - alpha. And there is a man with a suitcase full of talking brains , because brains have a communication component. This feels like a classic SS13 bug, business as usual, really.

munk-a 5y ago

The first real programming project I worked on that wasn't just a greenfield toy was maintaining a MUD. In the MUD community you tend to have 2-3 devs per MUD which is usually about 5% of the DAU. The code is insanely old and crusty but people maintain it because they want to keep it alive. You ain't seen crusty until you've seen Diku. Things happen because people care - a lot of people care passionately about SS13 and, while it may take quite some time (and while SS14 may not be it) I'm pretty sure there will be a SS13 remake eventually.

PJB3005 5y ago

We've[0] been at it for 4 years. As Moony already said, development has been faster than ever recently. We've gotten decently consistent player counts now over the past month, and just a few days ago a Twitch streamer Bikeman streamed SS14 to 1,500 viewers (peak)[1]. We may only have 15% of the content of an SS13 codebase but I like to think that we have enough merits like a less laggy engine to make up for that. I can say confidently that we have definitely broken the curse and short of a suspicious series of bus accidents across the EU, US and AU, nothing can stop us now. [0]: (current "iteration", SS14's code dates back to 2011 at LEAST). [1]: https://twitter.com/BikeMan/status/1455385097671254018 https://twitter.com/BikeMan/status/1455385097671254018

throwaway2331 5y ago
PJB is going to be the Lennart Poettering of BYOND soon enough. 4 years is a long time. Man's on a mission.

skeaker 5y ago

The development cycle for SS13 works entirely off of random contributors throwing up PRs simply because they want to. Hundreds of contributors, thousands of PRs, and tens of thousands of comments and feedback on those PRs is what keeps the game constantly moving and updating on a multiple-times-per-day basis. Normally I would agree with you that this kind of development could never be matched, but SS14 seems to be taking the same approach of being very accepting to any developer who wishes to contribute even slightly. I think that that's the sort of approach that will make it work out in the long run.

bankshake 5y ago

Edit: I apologize. They didn't deserve that. I'm having a bad day Hey guy, how's it feel to be a piece of shit? Imagining working your ass off on something, making incredible progress, and reading some asshole in the internet with psychic powers tell you "this will push out like the rest", even though it's literally nothing like the rest Nothing you said was true, side from that remakes have had issues in the past. You're talking completely out of your ass. Being negative know it all and trying to drag people down. "You will" go fuck yourself.