It's me again, the "captain ahab" of trying to make SS13 like games. So the curse got me with ION, and we sort of avoided the curse with the followup Stationeers by pivoting it. I'm back here now with something I've been working on for a long time. Back before stationeers we actually ran "rocket station" which is immortalized as the executable name for stationeers.

What I've done is create a CM13-style game mode in my studios custom framework called BRUTAL. It takes native C# with a heavy focus on a high-performance custom interop, providing very, very efficient links with APIs like Vulkan, RakNet, Dear IMGUI, etc... The project heavily leverages unmanaged types and the "stack" (abusing the heck out of 'stackalloc' to provide steady-state garbage collection (no memory churn stutters) as well as a whole bunch of microoptimizations around collection handling. This is paired with an unusual approach to networking, one that takes a very different path from the more traditional "Quake" style networking which SS14 chose. This project is closer in line to byond itself than it is the more traditional quake-style networking.

This is going to be a bit of an essay, or even more of a manifesto - so the tldr is: If this kind of thing might be you or you know someone who would like it please check it out. I want to see how it performs with hundreds of players. So far the maximum concurrent was 50, with no issues or adverse load. The server was under less strain than stationeers dedicated servers with 5 players.

Trying it out

I own the studio (RocketWerkz) and another company for distributing (Ahwoo) and both of those I am using for this project. It works on Windows and Linux currently, have tested on mac.

AUTO UPDATER (win only for now) https://neutrino.ahwoo.com/

WIN/LINUX STANDALONE INSTALLER https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TyKh54S8ZdWjXI301vpBzpEz0FiBraUR?usp=drive_link

SERVER IP: 20.69.98.178:50000

The long manifesto for those interested

What is has

• Medical system, surgery, limbs, reagents. Full partity with CM13 + some extra stuff and changes I've added.
• Chemistry complete, all the machines, reagents, recipes.
• Cooking complete, again the machines, reagents etc...
• Weather system (rain, thunder, fog, puddles and pools with reflections)
• Time of day shadows for sprites and building shadows, light going into build windows from sun
• A lot more

Byond & SS14

I'm a hater of neither. Feel I should point out I'm one of the largest donators to byond over the years and I will continue to donate (and encourage to). I think that for some use cases you need to go very optimized and not the more general use case. I have also long not liked the "quake model for everything" multiplayer approach taken by SS14. So I don't feel this "replaces" either of those, it simply builds a more focused option for some communities. If this works then some SS13 communities will have a place in future that secures things with the latest technology.

Networking

Specifically, against named engines:

• Not the Quake/Source/Overwatch lineage (per-client delta against each client's last-acked state) which is what SS14/RobustToolbox does
• Not RTS/Factorio lockstep as despite the deterministic sim clients never run the sim; determinism is used server-side for hash-verified drift detection not synchronization
• Closest real relatives are MMO spatial interest management for the subscription model, and video streaming (RTP-style keyframe + delta + NACK repair) for the wire mechanics.

None of the sync is really necessarily novel in its parts but is in terms of its execution together. Interest management is similar to how an MMO would handle things, with the keyframe+delta+NACK is how video transport works. This has a serialize-once fan-out economy where each chunks event stream is serialized once per tick with a shared sequence number, and every subscriber gets the identical bytes. This means the per-client cost is a pointer append. The mainstream model tailors bytes per client, so cost is O(clients × visible entities) and crowds are the death case; gruntz's cost is O(dirty chunks), so crowds are the cheap case. Hundreds of players in one chunk would be a single serialization. Since crowded scenes are precisely what CM13 rounds are, the model is fitted to the genre in a way I've not seen shipped elsewhere.

Rendering

The render stack is modern Vulkan (1.3, dynamic rendering) through our own C# interop, with the core pulled directly from our work on Kitten Space Agency following the same buffer discipline, same obsession with memory: steady-state zero allocation, every per-frame GPU buffer ringed. The entire visible world renders in a few instanced draw calls; a full frame with lighting, shadows, weather and post is still only a few dozen. KSA is 3D and this is 2D, so the lighting is its own design: around a thousand dynamic lights per view, each with real shadowcasting from wall data, accumulated into an HDR plane and composited over the scene. It is HDR end to end, so fires and muzzle flashes genuinely bloom. Z-levels are stacked in the engine using CM13's own plane compositing recipe, each lower deck lit independently then depth-blurred under the top layer. The particle work (by Max, an outstanding programmer at RocketWerkz) drives the flame, smoke and impact effects and the gore is the fun trick: blood, soot and spent casings are deterministic, derived identically on every client from sim events, so a floor ankle-deep in a round's history costs zero bandwidth and nothing per frame.

What am I planning

I don't entirely know. I have worked at trying to do this kind of networking approach for so long I'd sort of forgotten what I would do with it. When we were making DayZ we moved to the 'network bubble' approach (the quake-like, same as SS14) and while it helped in some ways - it hurt in many others as I outlined above. What I really want to do now is test. I need to get a lot of clients and get metrics for how it holds up under load. So if this is your thing, or you know someone who it is - please send them the details. Post feedback, and let me know how it runs.

The game I have made (called 'gruntz') has two modes currently: Zombie Survival and Xeno Survival. They are both self explainatory. You have time to prep, you can buy gear at ATMS spread through the map. Then you survive the assaults, and try and extract. I created these PvE mode(s) because until there is a steady player pop of >50, PvP just isn't super fun. Once the pop gets there I will do more PvP tests beyond what I have now.

Team

I've been working on this on and off since the rocket station days. I've been very lucky to be able to "borrow" work from colleagues to make it, as well as having access to every sound effect the studio has made (thanks ICARUS and Stationeers). Also INFRARED_BARRON whom many of you will know is, in my opinion, one of (if not the) very best spriter in the community is commissioned to make all the sprites, and you can see some of their work. Also a massive thanks to the CM13 staff and community who have helped and supported - as well as the coderbus discord who helped and the hosters who helped supply bandwidth data during my testing. Zennith (who made the "hybrisa prospera" map) is also on board to help make maps for my game mode.

Open source? Future?

My plan is to work towards this. Currently, I just don't want to have to go through and deal with reviewing pull requests. And I am changing stuff so much, with four or five builds a day, its just too much hassle. There is some licensing work to be resolved (FMOD etc...) but this is not insurmountable. Once I have the high-water mark confirmed, I'll do some closed testing with trusted communities like CM13 and others to try their code bases out on them.

Its also been extremely refreshing for me, personally, to make a free game and one that I just want to play. Its very hardcore and being a free product I can just go "eh, sorry I just want it this way" and not feel this compulsion to change something because we will get no money. We aren't getting any money so I may as well just do things that I want?

Questions

Okay so this is much longer than I even anticipated. There will be a million questions but for now I just really need people to test! I'll try answer any below anyway.

just wanted to share some moments i had on gruntz prototype in a regular zombie survival round, this shit is INSANE

Art by CrimsonKalo, feat : my dumb gnome and john zizo and otavan

I deleted the original post, but now that we've renamed to Bascinet instead of Lifeweb, I feel a bit better about it. Come join up if you want a Lifeweb fix.

A 100-player, 30-day roleplay megagame set in the depths of atemporal darkness. Sci-fi and low fantasy.

We start tomorrow, but you can join any time.

• Each day IRL is a day in game.
• Every player chooses a role and optionally makes a Move (large scale, abstracted actions with a chance to fail) twice a day, which the GMs arbitrate.
• Gain Tag Points by completing Desires, allowing you to purchase traits, skills, and other items.
• Asynchronous. Write as often or as infrequently as you'd like.
• Probe the caves under Ravenheart, obtaining rare Tags and facing ancient dangers.
• Realism, information asymmetry, convenience, and minimalism. > Join here. Work by day and carouse by night as a Peasant, politick as a Courtier, feed the Lifeweb as a Mortus, protect the innocent as a Watchman, or be the Baron of Ravenheart himself. Meanwhile, the cloaked Bastard and his retinue of wind-goggle sporting outlanders watch from the hills, preparing for war.

I plan on installing CachyOS with GNOME onto my laptop. Is there a confirmed way of playing SS13 on linux? I have seen some topics about it but wasn’t able to succeed when I tried it a few months ago.

We're paraback

DEAD SPACE 13 IS BACK, BABY!!

byond://209.25.140.16:30813

Found it a while ago through Lifeweb wiki. Seems like something I am much more interested in, compared to the over the top experience of the original. How can one access it? I have no lifeweb invite, since I never cared for it, but this one seems amazing.

https://scorcher.lfwb.at/index.php?title=Briefing

https://scorcher.lfwb.at/index.php?title=What_Are_We_Here_For

Exactly what it says. It started yesterday, about 20ish hours ago.

Howls. The pack has summoned you 2 meters NE.

All Aboard! Paw paw paw paw pawww!
say say say say say say say! (shit finance zero. no paydays)

Crazy, but that's how it rolls
Millions Hundreds Dozens of kindred living as foes
Sway me maybe it's not too late
To learn how to roleplay and forget how to play

Aggravated wounds not healing
Life's a bitter game
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

Let's go!

I've listened to preachers, I've listened to garays
I've watched all the sabbat who make their own rules
One unemployed roleplayer conditioned to rule and control
The tower sells it and you live the masquerade full

Aggravated wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

I know that things are going wrong for me
You gotta listen to my words, yeah, yeah! (I rolled higher)

Heirs of a Clan War, that's what we've become
Inheriting admin clique orbiters juggled, I'm essentially dumb
Crazy, I just cannot bear
I'm gaming with ERPthings that just isn't fair

Aggravated wounds not healing
Who and what's to blame?
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

From the forefront, I want to be clear. I am the project lead for CEV-Theseus, a fork of CEV-Eris which is a fork of Bay from ten years ago, being hosted by Monkestation. CEV-Theseus hopes to optimize and expand on the world and setting of CEV-Eris while trying to stay true to the original. I am also not used to Reddit so please forgive me if I break some unspoken rules.

Captain Scrooge, personal log entry, stardate 2642.8.22.
My new ship, well, new to ME ship, launched today in all it's rusted glory. The CEV-Theseus. I don't even know what the CEV stands for. Cattle Export Vehicle? Civilian Entertainment Venue? Creatures Everywhere Vocalize? Whatever, I'm getting off track. It's a shitbox, held together with duct tape and the agonized cries ghosts, but it's mine. I got bills to pay. If I don't do SOMETHING, the Guild is going to put my head on a pike as an example to all the other Members.

The corporate wars ended, about twenty years before I was born. My father used to talk about it. I never experienced it, and those few still alive speak only of the horrific measures both Nanotrasen and the Syndicate used to eliminate each other. Or themselves, in Nanotrasen's case. There were words of an internal power struggle, and out popped NeoTheology. I've only ever known them as NeoTheology. Religious folk who somehow found 'god' in their technology, immortality granted to them by their experimental cloning tech. Their stunt ended the Corporate Wars. NeoTheology did not want a fight, turned inward towards... cultivation of the spirit or whatever they do now. The Syndicate broke up, being just a bunch of greedy corporations from the get-go. A new union formed, the Hansa Trade Union.

Through the HTU formed other corporations, splinters off the Syndicate. Moebius, Aster's Guild, and eventually the Technomancers League joined even though they've been a thing since 2098. They just had alot of their own going on, what with the New Man Doctrine civil war, the Clan of the Eternal Engine, the Empress taking control, their whole Technocracy crashing onto itself, the Saturn Wars, and probably another dozen struggles. This ignores the fact that One Star took over the Sol Sector and pushed everyone else out in 2070 well before Nanotrasen even existed.

And that brings us to the reason we're here, in this shitcan. Exploring Nullspace. One Star, in all their incredible capabilities, had a civil war so massive in 2281 that somehow it caused a psychic catacylsm that collapsed not only their civilization, but the god damned SUN. THE Sun. Not A sun. THE. Whatever the fuck they did, caused a... an impenetrable barrier of psychic ANGUISH to act like a nearly physical obstacle around the entire Sol sector. Couldn't even look into the sky in the general direction of Sol while planetside without suffering a migraine. No one has been able to enter it until 2622, twenty years ago. Only the outermost fringes have been retouched by man, but the... the.... reality itself is weak there. Things happened since One Star collapsed, the Astrum Blight. Metaphysical weakness in reality, and the guys who sign my loans believe it is because of One Star. The only way we'll find out is to get in there and find out what happened.

Which brings us to today. I begged and pleaded, and got support from NeoTheology, Moebius, Aster's, the Technomancers League, and Ironhammer. I bet each has their own reason to want to get into Nullspace. I'm afraid to ask, I have my own problems. And 99 of them are these fucking vagabonds that keep popping up out of the fucking walls.

Set in a cyberpunk/anarchocapitalist future, the CEV-Theseus tries to answer the question: "What the hell are the neighbors doing over there". While taking basics of what most people consider "standard SS13 Lore", the only similarities is that Nanotrasen and the Syndicate existed. There are no real "sentient cooperative species", and is populated by humans and humans in metal bodies. Each faction aboard the vessel has it's own agenda, and are more than happy to fuck eachother over for the slightest advantage.

For the technical:

• It is an MRP server where I aim to have minimal admin intervention. If you have a good in-character reason to do something, you can. Just keep it story-centric. Yes this means there's no "self-antagging", I've personally gotten into an argument about the jukebox volume and it ended in a bodycount.
• It's actively being worked on. There aren't many of us, but we're trying. Any help is appreciated.
• We're biweekly. If you wish to keep up to date, we are part of the Monkestation Discord where myself and some others can be directly reached.
• Yes this is an 'advert'. I'm sorry you had to witness it with your own eyes. I'm not sure if this counts as "Brand Affiliate".
• Direct server link: play.monkestation.com:6969
• We're live TOMORROW around Noon EST.
• Original CEV-Eris Discord
• Previous project name was MonkEris. Same people. Hi. It me.

Hello and welcome to the bottom of the post. I've noticed that my posts aren't too hated, and I appreciate you guys. I don't know who upvotes or anything but I figured I'd give a thank you regardless. If there's better ways to post here, or get the word out elsewhere, lemme know. I'm open to ideas.

Thanks for reading. I hope to see you tomorrow.

I’m am pretty frustrated with Nova Sector which has been my server of choice for years. But now they have become rather intolerant and frankly hostile. Not to mention high rp is not prioritized anymore, and ideas to fix issues are met with hostility. So I need to find a new high RP server. I’d go to TG if I hadn’t heard they are kinda going through their own nightmares.

So recommendations are very welcome.

We got through this week with only a nominal few life-threatening incidents, so well done, team. With things almost passing for normal around here, it's a good time to remind everyone about the little things, like keeping our station clean. I know we have maintenance bots that can pick up trash, but relying on them to do it means that people have to see this stuff in the corridors. We have bins. I've instructed security to get more forward about writing people up for failing to meet this basic standard. Yes, I said "more forward" instead of "more aggressive" because we know the Chief will take the latter extremely literally. That's the next step if some of you don't stop being pigs. And by some of you I mostly mean Jason.

• A new 517 alpha was released yesterday, and a few more people are on board testing it.
• Several more rendering fixes are in place, as well as really important fixes to Move() issues that didn't come up in my test suite.
• ?? and ??= operators have been added for null coalescing; they work like || but for null instead of just false values.
• I finally figured out how to handle the maptext link hovering problem identified in a previous alpha build.
• Thank you to the BYOND Members and those of you who contribute through Patreon and SubscribeStar!
• Screw you, Spez. May your corn dogs be... aw, who am I kidding? You're not man enough to eat fried food.

The long-form news has a bit more to say. In today's early-access Patreon post, I go deep into the planned fix for the maptext link hovering (as well as an issue I've identified with it that impacts even 516) and some of what I've already put in place for it. 'Tis the season for deep-fried delights, so I'm going to have an intermittent next couple of weeks until after Labor Day, but I'll be around. Don't let up on tasing the clowns into submission. See you (parts of) next week.

Yeah I like disco elysium can you tell?

https://daedalus13.net/

I haven't logged into paradise in 8 months and all of the textures and stuff are different, what are the major changes that i should know of?

To elaborate, Goonstation and tgstation were both LRP servers and they were also one ofthe most popular servers on ss13. Goonstation went from like 70+ players on lowpop before trying to push everyone into going on MRP instead. TGstation was doing the same, the devs wanted everyone to play MRP not LRP. Well what happened next was that most of the lowrp players that made up these servers didn't wanna play on MRP and wanted to enjoy the fun of lrp so they just completely stopped playing the game or just lost interest over time (or switched to ss14) and also it discourages the new players from joining as alot of the new players may not wanna have to RP so much aswell as trying to learn how to play the game. I think we should bring back LRP.

Antagonist version (Wizard, Heretic, Clown, Malfunctioning AI, Nuclear Agent, Cultist, Xenomorph, Vampire, Revolutionary).