One Hour One Life Forums

Lucky_Luciano

Member

Registered: 2019-08-20

Posts: 4

Imagining the future of OHOL using SS13 for inspiration

This is primarily directed at Jason, but I would love to hear the communities feedback in regards to this idea. OHOL is a very special and very unique game, there's really no analogue for it. OHOL and SS13 share that in common.

Space Station 13, or SS13, has been in development since 2003. It's UI is terrible. It's installation is clunky. It's often unnecessarily complex, and its impossible to learn in one sitting. It's also one the best games I've ever played before. Sort of like OHOL.

SS13 is a 2d open-sourced top-down role playing game on board a fully simulated space station. SS13 is entirely unique in its game design, it shares concepts with TTT or the darkRP game mode on Gmod. The main idea is you pick a job at round start and you try and do your job.. that's it. Occupational hazards may include traitors, aliens, meth, exploding apples, xenomorphs, wizards, genetics super mutants, cult activity, murderous station AI, airborne viruses and all around incompetence. That's on a good day.

I could write a really long winded explanation on why this game is so cool, but it's better if you make your own conclusion. The reason why I think this game could be pertinent to OHOL is because the 2d crafting similar, the objective is similar, and the interactions are similar. It's the only game I can even remotely compare to OHOL.

if you've never heard about SS13 I recommended watching Mandalore's review (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLAHBexJxrE)then read the wiki of a good starting server like Paradise here : https://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

WARNING: If you jump into SS13 without reading about it you're going to be really confused, and it's easy to accidentally do stuff that can land you a temp ban or a trip the perma brig.

SS13 is free so Jason please check it out! Mandalore breaks down the installation process in his review, but you have to download the BYOND client and make an account. BYOND used to host other games but they're all dead for the most part, the only thing keeping BYOND going is SS13.

DestinyCall

Member

Registered: 2018-12-08

Posts: 4,563

Re: Imagining the future of OHOL using SS13 for inspiration

Ooooooh shiny!     I haven't heard of this game before, but it sounds awesome.

I'm interested by the "antagonist" mechanic.  It reminds me of a cooperative board game called Dead of Winter, where you play as a colony of survivors during a zombie apocalypse.  Everyone is working together to stay alive and fight the undead, but they also have personal goals.  And one of those goals is a betrayer card.  The betrayer only wins if the rest of the colony fails.   So most of the people are trying to keep the colony alive by whatever means necessary, but one of those players might be trying to sabotage the game for everyone else.  You can't reveal your secret objective and you can't win unless you achieve it.   It breeds paranoia and chaos and the best kind of drama, because you need to work together but you can't be completely selfless and you can't completely trust everyone to do the right thing for the right reasons. 

It adds an interesting depth that is missing from a straight co-op board game.

Kinrany

Member

Registered: 2018-01-22

Posts: 712

Re: Imagining the future of OHOL using SS13 for inspiration

The best way to learn about the game is to play as a ghost with an open wiki. Takes a ton of time though, simply because there are so many game mechanics to learn.

DestinyCall

Member

Registered: 2018-12-08

Posts: 4,563

Re: Imagining the future of OHOL using SS13 for inspiration

The best way to learn about the game is to play as a ghost with an open wiki. Takes a ton of time though, simply because there are so many game mechanics to learn.

So far I've managed to successfully download Byond (not very hard) and get it working correctly with my firewall/virus protection (a bit of a struggle) and I've played two lives as a Civilian on Paradise Station. 

In my first life, I wandered around the station examining everything and trying to not die too quickly.   I managed to learn how to speak about halfway through my first life.  I was completely mute for about 30 min which created some awkward moments when someone asked me if they could use an item on the table next to me.    At the time, I didn't know how to give items or set them down, so after learning how to local chat and apologizing for not answering his question right away, I immediately smacking him in the face with an oxygen tank.  Oops! Fortunately, he was really nice about the misunderstanding and taught me how to give objects to other people without committing random battery.   I didn't accomplish much with this first life, but I did survive until almost the end of the round, despite an invasion of evil clowns and various other space disasters happening around me while I wandered around the station, touching coffee makers and staring vacantly at heating panels.  Eventually, I heard a notification that the emergency shuttle had been called and it was time to evacuate the station.  Sadly, I had no idea where the shuttle dock was located, but I managed to follow a random person to something that looked like an escape shuttle.  He turned out to be a clown that had escaped custody.  He claimed to have been falsely imprisoned and asked me to uncuff him quickly.   For better or worse, I had know idea how to do that, so I wasn't able to help him before a security officer arrived.   At around this time, the escape pod detached from the station and I found myself tossed into space.   Not sure if it happened because I wasn't buckled into a seat or because the security officer's arrival forced my character out of the airlock, but either way, I found myself drifting in vacuum without a spacesuit.   I did not survive.   

At the start of the next round, found myself near the bar in the middle of the station.  This time I was able to actually talk to the bartender for a little bit, which was pretty nice.   And I figured out how to buy food from a vending machine.  Unfortunately, I ate too much space soup and a few minutes later, I couldn't fit into my jumpsuit .... I decided to explore a little to get some exercise and wandered around the common areas of the ship.  As a citizen, most of the sensitive areas were barred to me, but there was still a ton of stuff for me to poke and examine and try to pick up and accidentally hit with objects.  I'm pretty sure I broke about a dozen space laws by unintentionally stealing personal property, unintentionally damaging station equipment and unintentionally trespassing into restricted areas.  Fortunately for me, station security had much bigger problems to deal with ... like an infestation of space vampires and the Honkmother (whatever that is).   Eventually, I found myself in a small garden and I started playing around with growing plants.   I managed to figure out how to water and fertilize plots of soil, remove weeds, and harvest produce.   A nice man came over and helped teach me a little about stinging nettles and how to convert plants into biomass, before returning to his task of ripping up all the floor panels and breaking lights with a crowbar.  I didn't ask why he was doing that, but I assume he had some kind of a reason.  He was very dedicated to the task, so most of the area outside of my small room was completely dismantled by the end of the round.  It was quite impressive.    It was an interesting second life and, best of all, when the emergency shuttle was called, I was actually able to figure out where I needed to go and I escaped the dying station successfully.   Hooray!

....

It is definitely a difficult game to learn.  The controls are very complex and fairly unintuitive, with many layered menus and keyboard shortcuts.  I didn't spend much time on the wiki before diving in, so I was mostly lost for my first life, with only a very basic grasp of how I was suppose to interact with the world.  For example, I still need to figure out how to set an object down on the ground and how to buckle myself into a seat in an escape shuttle.   In that way, it reminds me a lot of OHOL.   If you come into either game "cold" you will be essentially helpless (and useless) for several lives until you workout the controls by trial/error and wiki research.    I've only scratched the surface of what you can do in Spacestation 13, but I can see why the OP felt like the two games were similar.   They are both very unique games and obviously quite different in many ways, but the feeling of the game-play is quite familiar.  I'd love to see some of the mechanics in SS13 introduced into OHOL.   There's so many cool things in this game.  I can see why it is still popular after so many years.   Very few games would even ATTEMPT to reach this level of depth and diversity.  It's crazy and awesome and beautiful.