bye

"When I first heard about a system where you can create your own game and play it online with others I had high expectations, maybe too high."

Uhh it met all the expectations you listed so why did it dissapoint you :P?

thats the hosts, or the games prob not byonds..

The graphical aspect of BYOND can be really disappointing. It has choppy, laggy movement, a maximum of 10 frames per second, and doesn't even support alpha channel or any kind of translucency. It's restricted to a grid and hard as all be to make anything larger than 32x32. It also doesn't have good support for any kind of windows, which most games use to good effect (like inventory windows, ship windows, status windows, etc. All BYOND has is a bunch of different panels all on the same screen with the only alternative being browser popups). The client.screen stuff is often clunky, too. And using overlays to enlarge your icons does funny things when they hit the edge of the screen sometimes.

I thus restate my belief that BYOND is best suited for text MUDs and board games. Unless you don't mind having graphically inferior RPGs (hey, some of them are actually prefered, like ZAngband).

So, it's all about how you look at it. I like BYOND because I often get the urge to create things, and the majority of the things I get the urge to create can be done with BYOND to some extent. At least, enough extent that I can be working on them until the urge goes way before I hit any major blockades to progress.

But if they had a version of BYOND with excellent client control (instead of leaving ALL the work to the server) and better graphical support, including 3D to some extent, they'd have an extremely marketable application here.

Excuse my language, but what the hell was that? lol

Triste wrote:

I thus restate my belief that BYOND is best suited for text MUDs and board games. Unless you don't mind having graphically inferior RPGs (hey, some of them are actually prefered, like ZAngband).

You are correct. Many people don't realize that, at heart, BYOND is an engine for designing "roguelike" games (in fact I believe ZAngband falls into this category) -- i.e., games where the map is entirely text-based, or essentially text-based but spiffed up with icons. Everything more advanced than that is just a convenience that Dantom has added to allow people to make nice-looking games. The enhancements open up a whole lot of great possibilities, but the fundamental purpose still applies.

Thus, BYOND will always be better suited to RPG's than action games. It's true that it is a limitation, but it's part of the design -- simply put, people who want to build action-oriented games are probably better off looking elsewhere. (On the other hand, it is quite possible to write good action games with BYOND, if they're designed to accommodate its limitations.)

No one's saying action games can't be done, they just can't be done well. For example, take Theodis' Racing Game. That's probably the best you're going to get with BYOND at its current level of ability. Compare it with another game that I downloaded recently, GeneRally. You can see from there what BYOND simply can't do with action games. Even if GeneRally wasn't partially 3D, BYOND still can't make a game that runs as smoothly as that. Another example would be SubSpace Continuum, which some people are familiar with. Simply can't be done to any reasonable degree with BYOND.

byond could do a subspace type game

if he took more time to get into byond he would like it...he's prob like me when i was younger i hated byond cuz i didnt wanna learn to code but look at me now...

o.0 (meaning im actualy trying to code not just sitting there)