IRL teacher here. Middle school friendly versions of Ss13?

[Fonduede]

I teach STEM electives for a middle school, and I have been playing Ss13 for probably about 5 years now. 

The depth and complexity of the emergent gameplay from Ss13 is always something that impresses me. I've been enjoying it a lot lately, and it dawned on me that our after school program could benefit from a game like this. It could teach them all kinds of interesting things about teamwork and problem solving. 

Are there any "educational" versions of Ss13, for lack of a better word? Something more appropriate for 6-8th graders?

[Boxta]

Well, we all play SS13 to have fun, generally not to learn school stuff, so i doubt there would be a codebase out there that would be good for teaching. You could look around for something like it, or you could try and ask the developers of the different server to help make a educational codebase

[Carbadox]

What do you mean? A game where you fart and burp on command sounds like an amazing thing to give to kids.

Depending on what you're looking for, it might be best to consider making your own fork of the games open source code. From there, you could easily work into adding and removing what you think is appropriate. Byond is a pretty easy to get into language and there's a number of different resources that can help you (the BYOND forums, our Discord servers dedicated Ss13 coding channel, as well as other servers).

Additionally, if it even gets to such a point, you could also encourage students to contribute to the code themselves, in the similar vein of what I've seen other teachers do with teaching kids Minecraft modding.

[Chayot]

Goonhub is probably the most tame server among them, if it isn't appropriate now nothing likely will be.
Of course SS13 development has been targeted at mature audiences. More-so on other servers.

It's a great idea, I can see why you'd want it. Teamwork, critical thinking, lots of fun.
All said It'd likely have to be a private server. Be a shame if some internet-troll were to come on and start harassing the kids.

I've heard of building servers but never visited one. Maybe someone else will know.

[Gerhazo]

My interpretation of the post is that they're asking for games of a similar genre: multiple people cooperating to achieve a goal, with SS13 being an example, not necessarily what they're asking for.

On which topic, I don't have anything that comes to my mind. The "Overcooked" games are fun coop games that require teamwork, though I'd say it's mostly entertainment and not necessarily have any educational value, on top of not being free.

[Fonduede]

Oh, no I for sure was looking for SS13 specifically. Removing the blood and gore for more friendly "deaths" (KOed?) , removing the drug references and cursing, while keeping the stuff like splicing plants, chemistry, creation of alloys, engineering and adventuring.

Where would I need to begin to start creating a friendlier SS13?

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Just saw the details at the end of Carbadox's post, I'll look at it!

[Superlagg]

You can get started by following this guide: https://hackmd.io/@ZeWaka/goondev

SS13 code is fairly easy to learn, at least as far as removing things goes. We're also eager to help with just about anything code related on the Discord!

[Studenterhue]

If you're looking for a version of SS13 or Goonstation that's stripped down to be kid-friendly or one that's catered towards education like how Minecraft does, then I'm afraid we don't have one. Like Carbadox said, you're gonna have to make your own. We've a Goonstation Development Guide for setting up the software and such to start coding with Goonstation.

BYOND was designed from its inception to be relatively easy to pick up, though it kinda lacks some of the amenities of current software for teaching programming. BYOND handles a lot of network-related stuff for handling multiplayer for you, so you can just concern yourself with content. People like to mock its programming langauge, DM, but it's all in earnest. DM for example just beeps out a sad error message when it can't compile; for something like C++, you might have crashes. I personally attest I haven't actually read any of BYOND's tutorials for DM and only read a few entries in its reference book, but I can still read the code with not much training besides a basic programming course in school.

I suppose SS13's alright for STEM. None of the systems mentioned are really realistic, but I think that's fine. It might not teach them real chemistry or whatever, but it can get them excited about it and allow them to express themselves through playing with those systems. I think at the kids' age, it's more important to inspire passion for learning about something than teaching it, plus there's the pragmatic aspect in that it'll help them out when they have to confront the complicating factors SS13 handwaves.

[warcrimes]

Yeah a codebase like ours is gonna have a lot of uh... *colorful* content, but you can probably fairly easily modify it to suit your needs.
A custom map for whatever you're trying to teach and a few toggles to turn off combat, and presto- still lots of work to do.

[Flourish]

You'll want to be careful about how you introduce the game and the codebase. Maybe don't tell them whatever you run is a cleaned up version of a much larger game and community. Maybe even rename it to something other than SS13? It'd suck if one of them discovered some even less friendly server and you got in trouble for that.

[Fonduede]

I don't think total realism is a necessity or even the right choice as mentioned, the importance does lie in the inspiration and critical thinking aspects.

I think renaming it is an excellent idea. They already talk about playing stuff like Rainbow Six Siege and CoD, so it's not like they're not already exposed to the content, but I think SS13 has the ability to inspire interest in areas that other games can't touch. It sort of simulates success in areas of science and engineering. Hell, figuring out telescience offset is a legitimate mathematic achievement!

[Wisecrack34]

If you do manage to accomplish this I'm sure it would be useful for other schools as well all across the globe so I genuinely do hope this comes to pass, that being said it WOULD require a decent coding to make more school setting appropriate. I wish you the best of luck should you choose to embark on this journey.

[Cyberjamus]

Recently I've been thinking about coding in beyond, In know linux but not too much about beyond, but I could help if you want, no promises though.

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Recently I've been thinking about coding in beyond, In know linux but not too much about beyond, but I could help if you want, no promises though.

Byond*

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Also funny thing, I downloaded ss13 and randomly picked this server first since it sounded cool, and the server had really good codes and good textures, rules mechanics ect, and for a while I thought every server was like that, but I joined another one once just to see and it sucked compared to goonstation. Goonstation has a great team of coders and developers, love the server. If you have to resort to using an already made server, goonstation is the best with coding/mechanics and friendly/appropriate content.

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Recently I've been thinking about coding in beyond, In know linux but not too much about beyond, but I could help if you want, no promises though.

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Recently I've been thinking about coding in beyond, In know linux but not too much about beyond, but I could help if you want, no promises though.

Byond*

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Also funny thing, I downloaded ss13 and randomly picked this server first since it sounded cool, and the server had really good codes and good textures, rules mechanics ect, and for a while I thought every server was like that, but I joined another one once just to see and it sucked compared to goonstation. Goonstation has a great team of coders and developers, love the server. If you have to resort to using an already made server, goonstation is the best with coding/mechanics and friendly/appropriate content.

excuse my grammar lol

[Gerhazo]

Oh, no I for sure was looking for SS13 specifically. Removing the blood and gore for more friendly "deaths" (KOed?) , removing the drug references and cursing, while keeping the stuff like splicing plants, chemistry, creation of alloys, engineering and adventuring.

Where would I need to begin to start creating a friendlier SS13?

---

Just saw the details at the end of Carbadox's post, I'll look at it!

My bad then,
although on the topic, I don't think you'll find a safe version without a fairly significant code overhaul, probably too much for something of this scale.

Also as something to be cautious of, with how gossip and rumors spread it could or could not be troublematic for word to go out about a teacher introducing students to a game and the game itself having questionable content, even if such issues or content were outside of your specific server and just discovered by superficial research into the game. Possibly something one'd want to avoid, though I can't really tell how much of a concern that should or shouldn't be.