Too many amazing moments and memories to even count, always more to learn. I love how the open source nature of the game means there’s many different servers branching off from each other, running their own custom versions of the game. Smaller servers “downstream” pick and choose which features they want to keep when the upstream servers implement something new.
It’s not open source, but I do want to mention Barotrauma here – it’s not totally unheard of, but I don’t think many people realize that it’s a spiritual successor to SS13. Supports a lot less players, but still up to 12 or something on the bigger ships, and it manages to turn the absolute insanity of SS13 into a compelling survival game that still has plenty of goofiness.
I entered SS13 with the ssethtide and I stuck around past the worst of it but I haven’t logged in since probably 2021. Is it a good time to come back and see what’s up? I enjoyed high population servers and a lot of people were leaving with the tide around and before when I did. What’s an average server pop these days?
The overcomplexity of the game is part of why I love it so much but it’s also what drove me off of it, because I couldn’t figure out how to run an offline server to practice roles and I wasn’t trying to do my first day of engineering or doctoring on a public lobby if I could help it. I had a lot of fun in Mining and Cargo and occasionally just faffing about as an assistant helping Botany grow weed or bringing monkeys to the chef - but I’d like to learn “a real job” one of these days (he says, knowing exactly how pissed off everyone gets if mining or cargo either die or are understaffed). And most folks didn’t usually seem inclined to adopt assistants, unfortunately. Remember folks, adopt wandering assistants and then spay and neuter them because unattended assistants will cook their hands off trying to break into the armory.
I mostly play on tgstation’s european server Terry, which often gets up to 100 players in the busy hours.
I know exactly the kind of anxiety you mention when it comes to having to learn a new role. That was partly why I also had the idea of installing a server locally to tinker with the mechanics in, which fortunately tgstation actually makes very easy. My problem then is that I only have like 10 minutes alone on the station before the power runs out, and I have to go set up the solar panels to continue my experiments. Turns out being solo crew on a space station isn’t all that easy.
Is there anyway to play on Linux? I’ve always wanted to try a role playing game but never found one that I think I’d vibe but ss13 looks right up my alley.
You might not be aware but there’s also a fairly content-rich successor project called SpaceStation 14! Its obviously nowhere near as featureful as 13 is, due to lack of development time but has a very active development community around it.
One of the major (imo) improvements is a move to per pixel “real time” movement instead of the tile movement of ss13, it helps make them game feel much more alive and interactive.
Definitely worth a look for fans of ss13, and its also open source and Linux compatible.
I didn’t see anyone mention Warzone2100 yet. An excellent RTS, with a neat research system and unit customisation, and fun campaign. They’ve recently added a couple of new campaigns I haven’t played yet, and have enough ongoing dev work on skirmish/multiplayer that some AIs are listed as “X% win rate in AI matches”.
Super Tux Kart (I play it on Android) is NOT one of them. The physics system is bad at some moments, the items aren’t fun to use and some of them ruin the game. The overall game feels amateurish (in a bad way), but one thing that I like is the Windows Car and the drifting. Those are awesome.
I really wish someone would do an OpenRCT3. It was so much fun being able to ride your creations. I had a 3D projector back then too, which made the game even more awesome. Such an underrated sequel.
And yes I’m aware that Planet Coaster exists but has anyone actually tried playing that game? They made everything way too complicated and I just can’t get into it. I don’t want to engineer every single bend and design the perfect landscaping from scratch, I just want to slap some rides together, see the guests come pouring in, and occasionally ride one of my rides (in VR, ideally). No game since RCT 3 has satisfied that itch for me.
I still haven’t tried it, but I’ve heard how great Veloren apparently is. It’s an MMO voxel game that takes inspiration from Zelda: Breath of the Wild and is written in Rust.
Xonotic (quake-esque FPS, IMO its like quake and halo had a FOSS child), Minetest (a voxel game engine, multiple games are available for it), and Mindustry (sandbox tower defense) are the only ones ive tried so far
Open source is not the same as source available. I’m not going to do a deep dive on definitions and licensing, but open source generally means that you are allowed to do what you want with it. It also usually implies that if the creator updates it, that updated code will also be shared.
The leaked Cyberpunk 2077 source code is from 2022 at the absolute latest (released 2024 from a hack done in 2022), is not open source licensed for re-use (meaning any use of it by people outside of CDPR is illegal), and they have released numerous patches, updates, and an entire DLC since.
I know that. It’s not entirely true that it’s open-source, since it does not actually have an open-source license, but it’s true to an extent that the source code is technically out there and anyone who doesn’t work for CDPR can (illegally) use it. The comment was only meant as a joke, I wasn’t trying to be real serious about it.
I asked this a while ago which is how I discovered Beyond All Reason which has been my FOSS game of choice as of late.
I’d also recommend Naev and Endless Sky (Both are based on the Escape Velocity Series, Naev is getting a 3D PBR renderer in the next release). Mindustry is good fun, actually purchased this one on steam to support the amazing developer. Extreme Tux Racer is a bit of fun and Super Tux Kart seems to get better with every update (did I mention it can run on the Nintendo Switch via homebrew!)
Edit: I forgot about 0ad and Minetest which I used to play a bit of a while back
Quite the opposite—I’ve only played Armada, not that I have any real strategy to speak of buy I like to set up lots of radar as well as claim the airspace early then once I’ve built the nuke the game is pretty much won. Haven’t tried that on a real player yet though
BAR is great – Total Annihilation was always one of my favorite games from childhood and BAR feels the most like it compared to other spiritual successors like SupCom/FA and other community projects. I actually tried to contribute a couple commits to the project but I don’t think they took them.