The history of SS13

Here's a brief account of the history of Space Station 13. When the path branched, the path that leads to /tg/station is taken.

See List of remakes for a list of remake attempts and games inspired by Space Station 13.

See Codebase History for a timeline of notable commits to the tgstation Github.

2003-2006: The Original SS13

The old look of Space Station 13

Space Station 13 started as the creation of a person known by the alias Exadv1, but not much else is known about them, according to giantbomb.com. It's not like he's a member of the community here or anything like that... ... ...

Anyway, after its release in 2003, the first few years the game and game mechanics were kept in extreme secrecy. You could get banned for talking out of character about game mechanics or through other means, which are not in character. The original map (image needed) for Space Station 13 was updated through the years. Generally, the map that pre-dates power and electricity generation is referred to as Originalstation, and all maps after that are referred to as OldStation. Rounds on Space Station 13 were similar to how they are now, eventually ending in the escape shuttle being called. The Player's numbers peaked at 10. Acquiring server files was difficult though, as you had to acquire them from one of the few people who had them. Never the less, SS13 servers started appearing on byond.com. The server files were sent as a compiled package (the .dmb and resource files only). It was also possible to acquire a version with defines, icon files, and the map files. This version allowed you to edit the map, but you had to send the updated map file to someone with the original source, so they could compile it.

After about three years, the popularity (yes, 10 players on a server was considered a popular game) of Space Station 13 started to drop. The few people with the original source files started to lose interest.

2007-2009: The Open-Source Resurrection

Map of the OpenSS13 Oldstation

A player known as AZA, who had received a compiled version of the game from Exadv1, became involved in some disagreements over the community. In response, AZA proceeded to work with another player, hobnob, to decompile this version and release it. This code was spread around from person to person until someone had the bright idea to start a community called OpenSS13. This was the first open-source version of Space Station 13. This move essentially laid the groundwork for all SS13 variants that would follow. The Something Awful community of "Goons" discovered the game, leading to the creation of several Goon-hosted servers.

Engineers chilling in the Engineering Break Room

In the era from 2007 to 2009, Space Station 13 gained a lot of popularity with communities like Penny Arcade, Goonstation, and OpenSS13 starting to grow. Player numbers reached unbelievable peaks of 18 players! The map everyone played was still Oldstation. Each codebase, however, had its own, slightly edited version. OpenSS13 used the OpenSS13 Oldstation map, while goons used the Goon Oldstation map, the latter of which is now the Derelict. It was during this time that the Goonstation community revised the original SS13 backstory and produced what is now generally accepted as the proper backstory.
In 2009, as Space Station 13 servers were getting up to 25 players at peak time, Goonstation coders and mappers made the biggest advance in years. They created a new, much larger station: Donut Station. As Goonstation was closed source, no other community could use the map, so they stuck with the OpenSS13 version. the popularity of SS13 steadily increased through 2009, eventually leading to the creation of yet another map design in 2010, dubbed Uterus station. The release was accompanied by a rewrite of much of the old Space Station 13 code, much of which was still tainted by fallout from the reverse engineering from years before that. In April 2010, as player numbers on servers were hitting 50, Goonstation decided to release their source under the name Goonstation r4407. Until 2016, this was the latest version of the Goonstation code publicly available.

2010-2016: This is Where /tg/ Comes In

Old BoxStation (then known as the tgstation) with Prison Station and all

After the release of r4407, the flood gates for new servers were open. 4chan spawned /tg/station, Bay12games spawned Baystation, both of which with their own set of coders, spriters and code, based on r4407 of Goon code. The three stations slowly gained player numbers. Goonstation with two servers, /tg/station and Baystation with one server each. The three communities each had their own policies and expectations for players, covering the full spectrum of roleplay.

As player numbers continued to grow, additional communities sprung up: NoX Station, Facepunch, YogStation, /vg/station and others.

2013-2016: /tg/station Transitions

Business as usual

In May 2013, the first transition of website hosting happened in a fairly bad way. The /tg/station forums and wiki were locked with little warning, forcing a scramble to create a new community web site. A large community effort succeeded in the transition of all /tg/station forum and wiki content onto a new site. Unfortunately, however, the old site remained online with no links to the new location. It very quickly fell into disrepair, making visitors think /tg/station was abandoned. Because of this, it took months for /tg/station to return to its former player count.

The new site was only destined to last a year. The explosive growth of /tg/station during this time in both player numbers, administrative team size and developer numbers, as well as the first instances of a "new guard" / "old guard" split, caused tensions in all three groups. Around Easter 2014 this culminated in a series of events, including the creation of a short-lived branch called NT-Station, the forceful removal of head administrators, the forceful removal of head coders and the web host dropping support for the developer community. The turmoil resulted in the creation of a new web site for /tg/station and the conclusion of the first transition of power in the administrative and developer ranks.

2015 and 2016 saw fresh challenges and changes for /tg/. The original server host stepped down from hosting the game server hosting, a new host stepped up and the server became crowdfunded through the community. A second transfer of server hosting went through with very little fanfare a few months after. Player numbers began to push 85+ players per server, the stations are huge and the game saw an explosion of contributions on GitHub from many new developers, as well as some media attention from gaming magazines.

2016: Gooncode Leak

On March 1st of 2016, someone stole the Gooncode and publicly released it - after some deliberation and messages of support from the other codebases, goon decided to make a new public release of their codebase instead of leaving it in a semi legal grey area.

A third server branch of /tg/ was created, using goons code to branch off from the main arm. This went as well as you can expect, the server never picked up a viable player population after the initial honeymoon period, and the server was eventually shut off.

2019-2022: The SsethTide

On Mar 17, 2019, SsethTzeentach made a video on Youtube about SS13 titled Space Station 13 Review | AHELP: Clown Grief Pls Ban He™. The video has gained millions of views. There as also been twitch streamers and youtubers that have made reactions to the video such as Asmongold and Forsen. This increased the popularity of SS13 to about 1000 to 1800 concurrent players. This event was known as the Ssethtide. It had event hall open for a few months which brought in a lot of TG players.

2020: Multi-Z

Multiple improvements were made to the Multi-Z system on the tgstation codebase. Two new stations were made featuring multiple z-levels, Tramstation and Icebox Station. This led to the removal of Box Station, which was significant because it had been in the map rotation since the beginning of the /tg/ server.

The multi-z botany on ice box station

2021: Combat Mode Rework

The intents system was simplified into just help and harm with Combat Mode , moving grab and disarm to secondary functions.

This caused disarm-based combat to become much quicker, and the game to be simpler to learn, surprisingly this caused little to no outrage from the general community.

2022-Present: The Curse Is Broken

SS14 was created to be a remake of SS13; the first to be available on Steam. An entire new engine named Robust Toolbox was developed for the game in the coding language C#, designed to allow other SS13 servers to transition to it and abandon the BYOND engine.

The game and engine had actually been in development since 2017, but 2022 was when it experienced a huge surge in popularity. In November 2022, SS14 had a higher ingame player count than SS13 for the first time. After 2024, the playercount of SS14 usually exceeds SS13 by an average of 500-1000 people, although this does not include SS13 unlisted servers. It seems that the playerbase of SS13 didn't shift to SS14 as expected of the "sequel"; instead, SS14 drew in a new playerbase.

Modern Era

2024: The Grimdark Trend

By 2024, people got bored of Fallout 13 servers (we forgot to mention those earlier). A new trend of medieval "Grimdark" servers began after code from a /tg/station fork called "Roguetown" was made public source. Despite having nothing to do with space or stations or 13, these servers comprise a significant portion of the SS13 community in 2024.

2024: The Wallening

The Wallening was a shift in the art style of /tg/station that introduced tall walls in a 3/4 perspective. It was in progress since 2022, and was merged on August 14, 2024. This caused the game to look better, surprisingly this caused little to no outrage from the general community.