Knightfall wrote:I've played on Goon quite a bit, and was a member of the secret science club that hoarded all the secret science stuff.
The allure of gooncode--aside from its optimizations at the expense of gutting atmos realism--is secrets. The whole reason their code was closed source was so they could keep their cute little secrets within in-crowds. Secrets do not engender good communities; they cause divisions, and resentment towards admins and coders, the latter group meant to serve the former.
During my brief time as a player on goonstation, I can tell you the code is entirely based around admin busing and that of unopposed traitors. If you had a problem with their style of playing/administration/whatever, tough shit, you cannot port the code. And since access to the code was limited, unless you were an IRC dudebro you couldn't make a feature yourself, being limited to suggesting it.
Even their anti-ban-evasion code isn't that great (iirc it's just a cookie they store in the byond cache, which is clearable within the client so...), being eclipsed by the built-in sticky ban feature.
Now that it's suddenly out, people will probably take the good bits and pieces sure, but overall I think it will be quite underwhelming. I won't lie, I am incredibly satisfied that their cute little bubble has busted; any server that even attempts to limit access to their codebase is damaging to the overall ss13 community. They also hold the insolent belief that they are chill enough to handle egregious conflicts of interest (moderating the ss13 subreddit, for example).
Ultimately, careful consideration should be taken before porting anything significant, since the playstyle is vastly different, and not conducive to the 5-hour extended RP shifts we have here.
