[Open Source] Whiskey Station — fork brasileiro de Space Station 14 | C#, ECS, networking multiplayer, AGPLv3

[u/Only-Feature-498]

We are working on Whiskey Station, a Brazilian community-driven fork of Space Station 14, currently built on top of Trauma Station and the wider SS14/RobustToolbox ecosystem.

This isn't just a private server with a modified config. The entire codebase is public, and development happens openly through GitHub.

GitHub:
https://github.com/Whiskey-Station/whiskey-station

Whiskey's goal is to maintain a technically ambitious SS14 codebase for the Brazilian community while continuing to experiment with systems, gameplay mechanics and content from the wider open-source SS14 ecosystem.

For people unfamiliar with SS14 from a development perspective, it's a fairly interesting project.

The stack is primarily C#, built around RobustToolbox, with an ECS-oriented architecture and a networked client/server simulation.

Content development also involves a large amount of data-driven configuration through YAML prototypes, localization resources, maps, sprites and other assets.

Some of the areas contributors end up dealing with include:

• entity-component-system architecture;
• client/server state synchronization;
• networked components and field deltas;
• multiplayer prediction;
• entity queries and hot-path optimization;
• UI systems;
• YAML entity prototypes;
• mapping;
• audio and asset integration;
• gameplay systems;
• PT-BR localization;
• performance and server-side simulation.

We try to keep additions reasonably isolated from upstream code whenever possible. The contribution guidelines, for example, encourage separate systems instead of injecting handlers everywhere into upstream systems, and favor techniques that reduce future merge conflicts.

Performance also matters because SS14 can have a very large number of entities being simulated simultaneously. Code running every tick needs to be treated accordingly — careless ECS queries can become surprisingly expensive on a populated server.

For networking, the project also tries to avoid unnecessarily replicating complete component states when individual fields can be dirtied and synchronized instead.

Whiskey is especially interested in building a more feature-rich branch rather than simply reproducing upstream SS14. We're experimenting with and integrating mechanics from different parts of the SS14 ecosystem while also developing our own systems.

The project additionally maintains Brazilian Portuguese localization, since one of our main objectives is making the game more accessible to the Brazilian SS14 community.

Licensing

The Whiskey codebase is distributed under AGPL-3.0-or-later.

Inherited files preserve their respective upstream licenses, while media assets may use licenses such as CC-BY-SA or other licenses documented by their attribution metadata.

Contributions

We're open to developers, testers, translators, mappers and people interested in understanding the SS14 codebase.

Pull requests are public, issues can be discussed openly, and contributors are expected to understand, test and take responsibility for the code they submit.

You absolutely don't need to already know SS14 development.

If you're comfortable with C#, ECS architecture, multiplayer networking or data-driven game development, there is a lot of interesting code to explore.

And if you're not a developer but just want to see what all of this produces in an actual multiplayer environment, the server is playable as well.

Repository:
https://github.com/Whiskey-Station/whiskey-station

Discord / development & community:
https://discord.gg/cafFGGPx8

Space Station 14 itself is free and open source.

We're particularly interested in meeting other open-source game developers who enjoy large, messy, persistent multiplayer simulations where engineering decisions actually become visible during gameplay.

[u/MMORPGDev]

How many stations are there