TRAILER
What is Space Station 13?Space Station 13 is a top down 2D multiplayer spaceman game, running on BYOND. It features an overwhelming amount of depth and complexity beneath simplistic cartoon graphics. It is a melting pot of ideas and genres, has tons of replayability, and generates fantastic and often hilarious stories.
The game centres around a research station, owned by a giant corporation known as NanoTrasen somewhere off in deep space. The game functions in rounds, and at the beginning of each round every player picks a job as a crew member on the station. These vary from anything to an Engineer, Scientist or Medical Doctor, down to the lower responsibility roles such as Janitor and Assistant. The gist is to perform your role and help keep the station running in a tidy and ordered fashion, which you'll quickly find to be impossible.
When the crew aren't turning on each other through sheer paranoia, they will also face various kinds of danger depending on the round: Sleeper Agents hell bent on sabotage, Soul-Sucking Aliens, RPG toting Syndicate Operatives and more. Not to mention the occupational hazards of working in space: Meteor showers, Radiation storms, Airlock mishaps and Catastrophic engine failure. These dangers have their toll, and can usually result in the death of everyone on board; or for those that survive long enough, a death defying run for the escape shuttle.
What do smart gamer folk think of this 2D Spaceman game? A sci-fi multiplayer sandbox with the same utterly batstuff more-is-more design as Dwarf Fortress.
I love Space Station 13! It's awesome.
Almost anything is possible, every round is different, and everyone is insane. And those are just some of the reasons I love Space Station 13
Wow, that's insane. It's a loving miracle that even compiles at all..
Sounds awesome. How do I play?
As previously mentioned, Space Station 13 runs on the BYOND gaming platform. Let's get this out of the way now - BYOND is not very good. At all.
Tom runs BYOND, but over the years development and improvements have come slowly, if at all. This is just something we'll have to deal with, unless Tom gets a constant stream of cash flow to maybe fix some of the bigger problems.. Our wiki contains all the info you need to get set up to play, but in case you don't want to read that, here's the process:
1)
Go to BYOND, download their client, and install it.2) Log into the BYOND client. If it pops up any updates at you, download them and restart the client.
OPTIONAL STEP])
If you want to have the servers on a quick list for you to click in BYOND, go to Space Station 13's byond page and add it to your favorites.You're now all set up to connect to the game! Bear in mind you want to connect to the "LLJK" (previously Gibbed) servers if you want the goon servers. You can do that one of a few ways:* Click the links in your quick list, if you decided to set it up.
*OR* Hit Ctrl+O in the byond window and enter either of these addresses in the prompt.
byond://ss13.lljk.net:26100/
byond://ss13.lljk.net:26200/
I joined the game and... what the forget is going on? How do I do anything?!I may have neglected to mention that this game has a kind of unforgiving learning curve. It's much better than it used to be, but compared to your average videogame there's a bit of figuring out and discovering you have to do before you can really function effectively. You may want to observe your first few games if you have the patience for it, just to get a feel for how the game generally goes down. Again,
our wiki has an article to get you up to speed and you really should read it! In case you don't want to, here's some basic pointers but don't be surprised if you end up getting confused:
Animated .Gif tutorial #1: Picking up, Selecting and Dropping Objects (More to come)
Is there a list of controls?Controls are both keyboard and mouse. Use the arrow keys to move your character around, and the mouse to interact with objects and select commands off the command panel. You can also type commands in manually. Here's a list, including some handy shortcut keys:
* If your main screen goes black, you've either been knocked out, blinded or are dying.
* Once you're dead, you're dead for the rest of the round unless someone revives you. There's no need to hang around if you don't want to if you're dead, you can come back for another round later on once the current one is finished.
* If you're confused about how to play, you can adminhelp us and ask how it's done. Try to actually make an effort to figure it out for yourself first please, though!
Help! I'm totally lost, where am I?Please consult your Cogstation Map!
With no labels:
So i've figured out how to move around and all that. What now?Now you figure out what job you want to play as. The jobs aren't hard-locked or anything - anyone can do any task in the game, the jobs mainly decide who has access to what. If an assistant tries to get into Research for example, he'll find the doors won't even let him in because he's not supposed to be there! This goes for a few other things on the station too, but it's mostly the doors. Here's a basic rundown of the jobs and what they're expected to do:
Command StaffCaptain: Highest authority on the station. This is akin to painting a huge target on yourself.
Head of Personnel: Direct superior of all civilian-class jobs. Sort of an evil vizier to the captain. Often vanishes without a trace a few minutes in.
Chief Engineer: Direct superior of the engineering department. Slaps the Engineers for not starting the engine.
Research Director: Direct superior of the science division. Decides who should be researching what.
Head of Security: Direct superior of the station's security forces. A special job you can only get via application!
Engineering StaffEngineer: Responsible for starting the engine and keeping up maintenance. They seldom do either.
Mechanic: Tinkers who can build all sorts of fixtures like vending machines and computers.
Miner: Goes off to the asteroid belt and beats up rocks to get ore to send to the station.
Quartermaster: Sell and order supplies for the station. Try to turn a profit by negotiating with traders.
Science StaffScientist: Does science on explosives, chemicals, artifacts and the fabric of space-time itself.
Roboticist: One of two jobs capable of bringing back the dead. Puts people's brains into cyborg units.
Geneticist: The other job capable of revival. Creates clones and superpowered mutants.
Medical Doctor: Doesn't do any science, but tries to stop people from dying. Emphasis on "tries".
Security StaffSecurity Officer: Tries to keep everyone from murdering each other. Throws criminals in the brig to cool off.
Detective: Tries to find out who did the crimes. In theory. In practice he just shoots people with his gun.
Civilian StaffBotanist: Grows plants and produce in Hydroponics. Yes, that includes weed.
Janitor: Clean up messes, slip up other crew members on your freshly clean floors.
Chef: Makes meals for the crew, usually from the crew.
Barman: A classy gent who reduces the bar's patrons to slurring, vomiting wrecks.
Chaplain: Normally of minimal use, but immune to the evil spells of wizards and vampires.
Assistant: The idea is they assist the other jobs with their duties. The reality is they're a hideous horde of grey-suited vermin.
Okay, so I got myself a job. What happens now?
You either do your job and try to help the station, or ignore it altogether and go on wacky hijinks of your choosing.
That is if you don't run afoul of whoever the station's enemy is this round. The game is played in rounds that end when either the foes of the station win, or the station is evacuated and the work shift ends. (Evacuation is usually counted as a victory for the crew.) There's always a catch to the round though - a randomly selected crewmember could be a traitor with a mission and various devious spy gear, a hideous alien creature bent on absorbing the crew's DNA and stealing their identities, a vampire out to suck the crew's blood, an evil wizard with dark magic spells, or even more weird stuff can occur like a group of terrorists trying to blow the station up with a nuclear bomb, or an outright anti-capitalist revolution gripping the crew.
Be aware that any of the crew may be trying funny stuff anyway, since that's the nature of the game - the game became popular from tales of it essentially being a grief simulator, and to some extent it still is. Bannings have been relaxed recently, though you'll still cop a punishment for being really rampantly unfunny. (Yes this is down to moderator discretion, so be sure your scheme isn't played out or trite before you carry it out.)
I'm still not convinced this is the game for me...How about a list of various bits and pieces we've got going on?
* Our coders add new features and squash bugs quite often.
* Powerful admin tools allow our admins to spice up dull rounds with whatever gimmicks they may be able to think of.
* Active admin staff keep stupid griefers and unfunny idiots off the servers. (Note that clever griefers are excluded from this treatment.)
* It's easy to build new things with the raw resources lying around the station. Want to build your own room? Sure! Fill it with vending machines? Of course, just call an electrician!
* A Chemicals and reagents system which interacts with all kinds of other game mechanics. Want to melt someone with acid by throwing it on their face? How about filling up a spritzer bottle with napalm for a deadly prank?
* Ridiculous stories to be made and told by the various crazy stuff the crew end up doing!
* It's free!
I enjoy the concept of the game, but jesus christ..Any plans to remake it on something that isn't BYOND?Yes! We're working on the Space Station 13 Remake. Head over to our site to see how we're doing!
Space Station 13 in video format!PlumpHelmetPunk does pretty great 'Let's Plays' of SS13SS13-related Sites you might like to visit:The Goonstation Wiki - The closest thing you'll get to a game manual. Be aware there's a lot of old and outdated information on here due to stuff in the game being changed quite often and the lack of wiki staff to keep it up to date and beat the crap out of the wiki in general.
The Goonstation Forums - Got banned? Come here to appeal it. Got suggestions or want to discuss various things? We've got that too.
Also, our IRC channel is #goonstation on synirc.net!
The OP was shamefully stolen from Supernorn over at the Something Awful forums: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3551842The old thread died a couple of months ago, so here's a new one.
