A project idea that I've been daydreaming about for a while (but haven't moved past research) is a cleanroom implementation of the online game Space Station 13. SS13 is built on the BYOND game engine, an ancient, closed-source client/server platform with a clunky, proprietary programming language. There have been a few attempts to rewrite SS13 in Unity or custom 3D game engines, but they've all suffered from second-system syndrome and development stalled. Plus they don't leverage SS13's most valuable asset: its existing game content, a huge library of game scripts and assets still being actively developed.
My vision is a new client with an interpreter for BYOND's proprietary language that can execute SS13's existing content unchanged. Compile the client to WebAssembly so people can play and develop the game in a browser without installing any software. Unshackle the game from depending on hosted servers by making the client peer-to-peer using WebRTC. If the new client dethroned the BYOND client, then incompatible improvements could then be made to its fork of the BYOND language.
The name for this project in my head is "Babylon 13". :)
I think this is a cool idea! But I disagree with your direction. Lets say you do rework everything to be web assembly and not bound to BYOND. I'm sure the 300 people that play SS13 would love it. But I don't think that goes far enough, for the effort required.
I think rebuilding SS13 in unity would overall be a great idea, but there is the problem of how complex SS13 is that would need to be worked. But I think with the right baby steps and SOLID design, it could be done.
But I do feel like any effort to rebuild would not be a huge success. SS13 is fun, but comparatively niche. Though as a mobile game there's a huge market.
Yeah. The game is far too niche for a rewrite to be worth the effort. This idea is more of a thought experiment in software migration (and an excuse to play with writing a parser in Rust and WebAssembly for an unusual programming language :)
The most practical approach would probably be writing a new SS13 engine in Unity or Godot to interpret SS13’s existing BYOND scriptures and asserts and also leverage Unity’s or Godot’s tools and game engine.
My vision is a new client with an interpreter for BYOND's proprietary language that can execute SS13's existing content unchanged. Compile the client to WebAssembly so people can play and develop the game in a browser without installing any software. Unshackle the game from depending on hosted servers by making the client peer-to-peer using WebRTC. If the new client dethroned the BYOND client, then incompatible improvements could then be made to its fork of the BYOND language.
The name for this project in my head is "Babylon 13". :)