I first joined BYOND four... five-ish years ago, with the key Younglinkie2003. Back then, the website was well constructed, being amazingly simple, easy to navigate, and overall beautiful. The client of BYOND took advantage of the hub, and the pager was free. Overall, I enjoyed my experiences with that version of BYOND. Then, when 3.5 was introduced, everyone I knew, including myself, groaned at the transfer from the Dream Seeker holding the Pager and Hub and everything to the seperated Pager - and the need to pay BYOND to send Pages or even view what game people were playing just added insult to injury.
However slowly, SLOWLY, everyone, including myself, transferred over. We got used to it, though we still thought that the concept of the older versions was much better - being able to access the hub and pager from the Dream Seeker, instead of the random games flashing in the seperated pager. And to me, 3.5 seemed buggier than the older versions - often crashing on games requiring you to upload something. I could find no way to fix this, EVER, though it seemed that this problem was selective on computers. I just shrugged and moved on, dealing with the constantly closing Dream Seeker.
Then, BYOND 4.0 came out. My first impression was worse than my first impression of 3.5. And even still, yet again, to add insult to injury something else happened that made the new version all the worse. The websites layout changed.
I type here, looking at the yellow fading to orange, with the white bar, the random blocks of orange, and the blue main area. I think, "What is this? Where do I begin to go from here to where I want to go?" Indeed, back in the older website there was one link that displayed all the games online, minus the unpublished games, in their own section. It was easy to access what you wanted, and it even showed how many people were active so that you could decide whether or not it would be worth it to check to see if X game was up. Now, I find myself having to choose a guild to be taken to the main page that shows only but about half the games online, as well as some offline games that I could give less of a damn about, and god knows what else. I have to choose to see the online games, choose the game - remember that I have to -log in- to join the game, then be directed back TO the page to join it. What happened to the ability to join a game in around three clicks? Why am I forced to log in to join - I never touch this site except when something happens to the games I play and I have to join through a different port number. Even the layout, the colors. It's annoying.
You know. One of the most popular sites has the most amazingly simple layout. Logo, search bar, two buttons, copyright stuff. Google is simple, and loved by most everyone. Even getting to this forum took me some time to figure out.
So I ask two questions.
Why?
What next?
ID:133533
 Jul 3 2008, 5:01 pm
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You can't make everyone happy. As BYOND's audience grew, we had to make some changes to accommodate. We also had to make money. 4.0 was an attempt to make the developers happy by giving them more flexibility in their interface. In order to do this, we had to remove hard-coded components, so that's why the pager became a separate app (it's also a bit more logical to have a constant connection to the hub when you are going in & out of different dreamseekers). 3.5 was just an intermediate that lasted far longer than planned, but that is behind us.
The website evolved in a similar manner. As our audience grew, we had to fragment things so that the Anime crowd wouldn't overwhelm other users. You can still get a view of all live games by going the Games menu and clicking on All (makes sense), and then "See more..." if you want an extended list. We added the members stuff a few years ago to make money and that fragmented the whole website, both externally (in how it looked) and internally (in how it was implemented). The new setup is a lot cleaner on both fronts. It also supports the ads which provide about half of our income. I personally think that the game hub is a lot cleaner under this new setup, but I'm open to suggestions. Next week, with the v.421 release of BYOND, it'll address a few of the login issues you've noted-- specifically it'll make it so that a login on the web syncs up with a login on the pager, and also add the ability to login as a Guest right from the web. I think this will particularly improve the experience for new users because they won't have to register a key to try out a game. I have no problem with criticism of either the software or website but it should be constructive. Give us some specifics on things that we can do to improve the experience, or particular points of confusion. It is human nature to resist change and I think that is largely what is happening here (since I consider this website a lot simpler than our older versions). Believe me, we've gotten complaints like clockwork on every major release of both the software and website. | |
Well, I actually understand all this. Though, I do not understand why I am required to log in to join a game. It's just... honestly, I think the simpler format from about a year back looked better, even more professional. Sure, the bar at the top -is- helpful, but I still don't understand why there are now guilds for everything, and further that when I choose a guild I'm not linked directly to the games.
The fact that getting used to changes is hard doesn't change the fact that I liked how BYOND 314 was set-up, with the pager set inside the Dream Seeker. After all, I usually have one Dream Seeker up, ever - most people I know tend to have one Dream Seeker up, ever. Sure, I'll give that Dream Seekers as a whole have gotten better - though I at first hated 4.0, I absolutely love it now because I can easily edit it and it gives me more freedom than 3.5 (I always did hate the plaid light-brown color littering the skin.) In fact, I enjoy the thought of the BYOND site being less about bright colors and more about darker colors - I think white text on darker backgrounds is the easiest to read out of anything. It's just... my main beef is with the guilds. Why guilds? It was just fine as it was, with two sections, Live and Unpublished. The three-thousand NaruClones don't change this because Unpublished was always full of anime clones anyway. | |
I understand not everyone is happy. However, it would help me to know why, why the new website and seperate pager, and what to expect next as a whole.
I don't know about the website - no matter what, I think I'm going to say that the way the website was first when I joined BYOND was best because it's how I grew up through BYOND. After all, I used to play about a bazillion games on BYOND, and now it's surprising for me to go to two in a week. I can't honestly suggest things for you to make it better - in all honesty, I'm usually content with how it is and rarely do I get annoyed by something (such as the logging in everytime I have to use the hub, even when I tell it to keep me logged in.) Sorry if I bugged you or anything, but I was truly asking a few questions to help me better understand what's going on behind these changes. Thanks for the time to give me the response. | |
JRG wrote:
I understand not everyone is happy. However, it would help me to know why, why the new website and seperate pager, and what to expect next as a whole. Tom actually explained the reasoning behind the separate pager in the last post. But as for why the new website, I can tell you that in one word: maintenance. Originally the BYOND website was all done in C++. That had some advantages and disadvantages, but it basically just served to drastically complicate the hub code and small changes were difficult to implement. A few years back, Deadron and Mike started porting some of the site to Perl, and for some time we were working with a weird Perl-C++ hybrid. Now the website is all done in Perl, which has proven much easier to maintain. Several other changes to the site dealt with the need to improve users' ability to interact with the site in general, and to make things friendlier for new arrivals. A lot of the older elements of the site were half-functional and we had a lot of useless clutter, settings that made no sense or were inconsistent, pages that were never used at all, and inflexible interfaces. Many of these changes would've had to be made regardless, because there were things floating around that literally no one understood anymore. Navigation was confusing for new users. I don't know about the website - no matter what, I think I'm going to say that the way the website was first when I joined BYOND was best because it's how I grew up through BYOND. After all, I used to play about a bazillion games on BYOND, and now it's surprising for me to go to two in a week. I think that probably has nothing to do with the website, but much more to do with the frequency of good games being hosted--one of the core issues we want to address. But also I think you may just be experiencing a shift in personal priorities and time management; it happens to everyone. The website was different even when I first joined in 2001 than what people have been used to for the last few years. I liked its simplicity a lot, but what it had in simplicity it lacked in ability. That much older site was designed for a much smaller core group of users--it simply couldn't sustain our larger community now. The last incarnation of the site performed a bit better but we were still pushing it to its limits. I can't honestly suggest things for you to make it better - in all honesty, I'm usually content with how it is and rarely do I get annoyed by something (such as the logging in everytime I have to use the hub, even when I tell it to keep me logged in.) That actually sounds like more of a browser or cookie problem, but that's not intended behavior so anything like that would be the subject of a different thread. Sorry if I bugged you or anything, but I was truly asking a few questions to help me better understand what's going on behind these changes. Thanks for the time to give me the response. I don't regard it as "bugging", so no worries. People are curious about what's going on with BYOND, and of course as Tom said there seems to be no shortage of complaints whenever any new change is made. When we release 421 I think some of BYOND's direction will be a lot clearer. Lummox JR | |
JRG wrote:
Well, I actually understand all this. Though, I do not understand why I am required to log in to join a game. It's just... honestly, I think the simpler format from about a year back looked better, even more professional. Sure, the bar at the top -is- helpful, but I still don't understand why there are now guilds for everything, and further that when I choose a guild I'm not linked directly to the games. Version 421 will eliminate the need to login to join a game. As for the guild links, that's something we've kind of had to play with to see what works right. I think what we've got now there actually makes the most sense. The fact that getting used to changes is hard doesn't change the fact that I liked how BYOND 314 was set-up, with the pager set inside the Dream Seeker. After all, I usually have one Dream Seeker up, ever - most people I know tend to have one Dream Seeker up, ever. Problem is, the pager being inside DS fails on two levels: It prevents the game author from having a flexible interface, and it also means that one DS has the active pager and the other does not if you end up in two worlds at once. I've done that before a lot, and I can tell you it was a real pain to keep up with. Separating the pager out was really a necessity. Sure, I'll give that Dream Seekers as a whole have gotten better - though I at first hated 4.0, I absolutely love it now because I can easily edit it and it gives me more freedom than 3.5 (I always did hate the plaid light-brown color littering the skin.) In fact, I enjoy the thought of the BYOND site being less about bright colors and more about darker colors - I think white text on darker backgrounds is the easiest to read out of anything. It's just... my main beef is with the guilds. Why guilds? It was just fine as it was, with two sections, Live and Unpublished. The three-thousand NaruClones don't change this because Unpublished was always full of anime clones anyway. The guilds are a way to try to get our greatest resource--our users and developers--to organize games for us in a way that BYOND staff could never find time to do. As time went on, it was downright impossible to keep up with games being submitted to the main channels, which involved reviewing them for quality. The Unpublished list grew, and it got harder to find new games. To the extent that the guilds haven't been helpful, I think it's only because they haven't been active enough, not because the responsibility for sorting games was handed off to them. Lummox JR | |
Lummox JR wrote:
JRG wrote: My guess is he's referring to the way you have to re-login login when accessing secure pages. That's more a plus than a negative, and it takes 2 seconds to fill out (or, if you're the sole user of your machine and use a sensible browser, why not have Firefox remember the password, so all you have to do is press the Login button when you hit that page?). | |
Hiead wrote:
My guess is he's referring to the way you have to re-login login when accessing secure pages. That's more a plus than a negative, and it takes 2 seconds to fill out (or, if you're the sole user of your machine and use a sensible browser, why not have Firefox remember the password, so all you have to do is press the Login button when you hit that page?). Ah yes, the re-login per session for secure pages is intentional. Can't be too careful when it comes to security. Lummox JR | |
Hiead wrote:
secure pages. That's more a plus than a negative, and it takes 2 seconds to fill out (or, if you're the sole user of your machine and use a sensible browser, why not have Firefox remember the password, so all you have to do is press the Login button when you hit that page?). Both of the points you've mentioned are pretty counterproductive to the 'secure pages plus', though. If it only takes 2 seconds to type in your password it's likely a too weak one, and if you have the browser remember the password for you it renders the whole "re-login" feature purposeless. So maybe users should just be able to turn it off once you've logged in properly once, from your account settings page, if you they don't care that much about security. Since that isn't a necessary feature, and as you see annoys some people. | |
Why guilds? It was just fine as it was, with two sections, Live and Unpublished. The three-thousand NaruClones don't change this because Unpublished was always full of anime clones anyway.Two sections? Are you ignoring the official channels? The guilds are an improved form of the channels, but with blogs, ranks, and better forums. I find the idea that the channels were ignored quite disappointing since many of us had games there, but I'm not surprised. Frankly, the old site sucked for developers. The focus on Live games is still a problem since it's the first list of games that BYOND sites display and players appear to be conditioned not to look anywhere else. It's a positive feedback loop. Games that get players are the ones that get played. The others are screwed. However, they are less screwed now than before because they're only a click away from the Live games in the same guild. The fact that there was a flood of a type of game in Unpublished wasn't a problem in and of itself. The problem was that players could rarely find anything else. Getting testers, or even players in general, was neigh impossible from within BYOND unless people already knew you. The list had to be divided and sorted. (As a side note, so should Xbox 360 downloads. Every developer who thinks that deleting to clear virtual shelf space is a good idea has their head shoved firmly up their colon... and they're sharing space with the developers who think people will magically find a game if it's "good enough".) | |
Kaioken wrote:
If it only takes 2 seconds to type in your password it's likely a too weak one. Some of us type very fast. If you have the browser remember the password for you it renders the whole "re-login" feature purposeless. As mentioned earlier that's for people who are the sole users of their computer. For people with family computers, having to re-enter your password for secure pages prevents the "my little brother logged in and..." stuff. | |
Foomer wrote:
Some of us type very fast. Like me, but the typing speed is actually the less relevant factor for what I've said. If you have the browser remember the password for you it renders the whole "re-login" feature purposeless.As mentioned earlier that's for people who are the sole users of their computer. I noticed you said that. It's just that it's irrelevant; in that case, people with the ability to access your computer (or at least, browser) are all going to be able to skip past the "re-login" feature as if it wasn't there, secure-wise, regardless if they have physical access to your computer or not. Not to mention there's barely much problem with little brothers messing with settings on the account page; that problem is only a real problem for other things, for this, all possible damage is personal-only and therefore at the fault of the user leaving free access for computerwreckers (such as but not limited to, moms and little brothers) to his PC - and it can all be reversed by him with no lasting damage, even if the password is changed, which would be more difficult to do randomly. For people with family computers, having to re-enter your password for secure pages prevents the "my little brother logged in and..." stuff. Considering the commonness of "remember my password", I consider that feature's only point is what Lummox said - "it's simply nice to have", but not much more. Besides, again, it isn't a website's fault or issue if you don't password your computer or otherwise limit unwanted access to it. It's the same thing as if you give out your account (key) password to someone and they change it on you - your fault for giving the free ticket. ...Yeah, this isn't a too important discussion to the topic, so I'll leave my opinion at that in this thread. | |
Kaioken wrote:
Both of the points you've mentioned are pretty counterproductive to the 'secure pages plus', though. If it only takes 2 seconds to type in your password it's likely a too weak one Or, like in many of our cases, we have a nice secure password that, since we've used so often, it's become easy for us to type. D4RK3 54B3R said it takes him about 2 seconds to type his key---it takes me longer. If that were a password for something (not for the D4RK3 54B3R key, of course), I'm sure it would be considered a strong password since it's 11 characters long and mixes numbers, letters, and symbols (the space). and if you have the browser remember the password for you it renders the whole "re-login" feature purposeless. No, if I'm the sole user of my PC it just makes it so I don't have to worry about that. If for some reason there's some kind of cookie error or whatnot, and somebody ends up logged in as me on a computer halfway across the world (this has happened on numerous occasions; I've been logged in as someone else, people at one time ended up logged in as Tom...), I don't have to worry about them changing my account details, such as my password or e-mail address. | |
Your right BYOND was great,until these days that lie before us ruined everything. The old days were usally the best
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This has been a trend ive seen in byond games, when you make a game or apparently it applies to anything, people who play it from the early stages get a nostalgic attachment to it and never appreciate the changes made to it. The truth is though, byond has come a long way and while i think the site is as good as it needs to be, all thats left is to fill it up with a new generation of original games. So im hoping to see some updates to DM that focus on bugs and stability. I really think the interface update in 4.0 and the new icon format have been absolutely wonderful upgrades that allow game makers to go much further than they ever were able to, now its a matter of making people leave their comfort zones and make epic games.
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Agreed, as i recall when i did get my game "published" i noticed a drop in player count. I then removed myself from the published section to be back in the mess of unpublished games where the majority of byond players were looking.
Ugh, its always bad when organization penalizes a game. The way things are now are soo much better. | |
Tom wrote:
Give us some specifics on things that we can do to improve the experience, or particular points of confusion. One of the things that has been itching at me is that games with no hub entry are no longer listed on BYOND. I used to use this feature to scout for BYOND games hosted by newbies who have no idea how to create a hub entry and are very new. During a period of boredom I would occasionally review this list, stripping out the anime and finding original games. I would then contact the developer(s) of such games to assist them in making their game. Similarly I also used this method to find iconmakers so I could make projects of my own. Sadly none of those projects were ever finished, but you gotta keep trying! It would be nice to get this list back: just a raw list of all games without a hub entry set. It was there before, but was removed because it got spammed with Anime and it was pretty much used as a second BYOND Anime, but I think that if it were partially hidden it would prove of great help to people such as myself who are interested in some of the newer games being produced or thought of on BYOND. Now as for a "particular point of confusion", that would be the whole "blue/orange atom icon in the top-left corner" feature. Sometimes I see it becoming orange. When I click it, I get redirected to my home page and it becomes blue. Then when I visit another page, it apparently grabs the cached result again and it's back to orange. Updating the search functionality is also one of the things I would look forward to. Right now you can perform basic searches for words found in the title and descriptions of hub entries, but it would be so much nicer if you could filter by guild, author (this is at least partially possible), rating (only show games with good reviews which have been yay'd a lot), etc. Likewise, it would be possible to remove such filters from the existing list: just like you can type a search query such as "-naruto" which removes all games which even reference to the anime, it should be possible to type -author:androiddata to strip all games on my key, or -guild:byondanime to instantly get rid of most of the anime mess. Perhaps the first and last suggestion can be combined into one: +nohub would show games which have no hub entries set (perhaps -hub +nohub would show only those games with no hub entries set). I also have some ideas for the software. Received and sent pages should show the date of the action. As has been said, you only had a pager connection if you had DreamSeeker open in the past, but nowadays you have people (like me) who have the BYOND Pager open 24/7. A "clear" function for the pager output window would also be nice. Some additional elements would be nice to have for the 4.0 interfaces. Sure it's all fine and dandy now, but if you take a quick look at Visual Basic you'll see there are many more elements available there: I think BYOND should have something like that, with a lot of possible elements. Again stated before, but DreamDaemon should really have multiple ban lists. The DreamDaemon ban list should combine the modern banning function of stickybanning and easy maintaining with the existing pagerban functionality of being able to store this system-wide, user-wide, parent directory-wide (i.e. a game in c:\Games\MyGame would store a list of bans on c:\Games\ so all games in that directory now share the same list) and world-level. This could be sorted with a second tab interface: [All], [World], [Parent] (or [Home]), [User] and [System]. Without administrator access, you cannot alter System. Also which I think is a very good idea is to allow developers to interface with the DreamDaemon banning, but only allow them to maintain bans at World-level. Even better would be to create a "Game-level" of sorts that is the same as World-level but can be influenced by the developer. This could potentially be read-only and could be disabled with a checkbox from within DreamDaemon. DreamDaemon should also have a safe mode exceptions tab: this allows you to do shell(), call() (with dll) and other such functions within safe mode. Basically it would allow you to specify commands that are acceptable -- with regex -- for shell(), and dll files that may be accessed with call(). 'Official' DLLs could even get an exception automatically. In the case of DLL files, it would store an md5-hash of the file the last time it was updated, so that any tampering with files or the introduction of a game which has a .dll file with the same name will pop up a security alert. Now onto DreamMaker: the icon editor seems to be having a few glitches. Everytime you edit an icon and go back to the icon list, it flickers and flickers and refreshes the list. This is annoying; it should really only refresh the icon that was modified, not redraw the entire list. The more states you got in your icon, the more annoying this becomes. And last but not least, groups in the skin editor should really become an option. You know, like what happens in DreamDaemon ban control when somebody multi-keys: a group would basically be the main key, and clicking it would open up a list of windows/panes and groups within that group. ... You asked for it. =P | |
Android Data wrote:
Now as for a "particular point of confusion", that would be the whole "blue/orange atom icon in the top-left corner" feature. Sometimes I see it becoming orange. When I click it, I get redirected to my home page and it becomes blue. Then when I visit another page, it apparently grabs the cached result again and it's back to orange. Apparently that confusion extends to color as well, since the atom is red, not orange. :) The atom shouldn't become red again though when you visit another page, unless new alerts have in fact appeared. You will see it remain red when you hit the back button on your browser though. Updating the search functionality is also one of the things I would look forward to. Right now you can perform basic searches for words found in the title and descriptions of hub entries, but it would be so much nicer if you could filter by guild, author (this is at least partially possible), rating (only show games with good reviews which have been yay'd a lot), etc. -guild:byondanime isn't working (it's not precisely clear to me why, so that might need some testing), but -author:androiddata should work because I tested that on a different author. Pretty much all you've requested here besides the -guild though is already implemented, except for the rating thing which is really too difficult to bother with. Perhaps the first and last suggestion can be combined into one: +nohub would show games which have no hub entries set (perhaps -hub +nohub would show only those games with no hub entries set). The search would actually need considerable modification to handle games without hub entries. The fact that they don't exist in the database means a database search geared around hub entries can't, by definition, find them. I also have some ideas for the software. Received and sent pages should show the date of the action. As has been said, you only had a pager connection if you had DreamSeeker open in the past, but nowadays you have people (like me) who have the BYOND Pager open 24/7. A "clear" function for the pager output window would also be nice. Noted. Some additional elements would be nice to have for the 4.0 interfaces. Sure it's all fine and dandy now, but if you take a quick look at Visual Basic you'll see there are many more elements available there: I think BYOND should have something like that, with a lot of possible elements. I'm all for feature foo, but our very top priority right now is getting more bodies in the seats, as it were. Once I'm back on feature duty you can expect a rash of new stuff. Again stated before, but DreamDaemon should really have multiple ban lists. The DreamDaemon ban list should combine the modern banning function of stickybanning and easy maintaining with the existing pagerban functionality of being able to store this system-wide, user-wide, parent directory-wide (i.e. a game in c:\Games\MyGame would store a list of bans on c:\Games\ so all games in that directory now share the same list) and world-level. That would require privileges the user may not have on their system, and also most users don't have the games structured that way in their file system. But in general, this violates the KISS principle: Anyone you'd want to ban from one game, you'd certainly want to ban from all of them. Also which I think is a very good idea is to allow developers to interface with the DreamDaemon banning, but only allow them to maintain bans at World-level. Even better would be to create a "Game-level" of sorts that is the same as World-level but can be influenced by the developer. This could potentially be read-only and could be disabled with a checkbox from within DreamDaemon. No. The list of bans stored in Dream Daemon should not be accessible to DM code. This is a potential breach of security and privacy. It also serves to enable game authors whose desire to control all aspects of hosting borders on fascism. DreamDaemon should also have a safe mode exceptions tab: this allows you to do shell(), call() (with dll) and other such functions within safe mode. Basically it would allow you to specify commands that are acceptable -- with regex -- for shell(), and dll files that may be accessed with call(). 'Official' DLLs could even get an exception automatically. It'd be one thing to store the "Allow this function" question for a trusted .dll and only re-ask whenever the DLL changes due to an upgrade, because that's sensible. But doing this for shell() and run() and such would be a major security breach. Now onto DreamMaker: the icon editor seems to be having a few glitches. Everytime you edit an icon and go back to the icon list, it flickers and flickers and refreshes the list. This is annoying; it should really only refresh the icon that was modified, not redraw the entire list. The more states you got in your icon, the more annoying this becomes. This may or may not be fixable. Depends on how ingrained it is in Windows' behavior. And last but not least, groups in the skin editor should really become an option. You know, like what happens in DreamDaemon ban control when somebody multi-keys: a group would basically be the main key, and clicking it would open up a list of windows/panes and groups within that group. I'm not sure I see the utility in this. It's an interesting idea, but it'd be an organizational nightmare internally and would radically alter the skin editor interface. The cost/benefit ratio seems high. Lummox JR | |
Now, the white and blue scheme seemed professional, but at the same time BYOND's largest audience was in adolescents, so I'm guessing that's where the bright colors came from. The navigation changed some, but it's actually simpler now with the standardized menu at the top. It's not perfect, but eh, it works. Any time there's a major update to something it requires some getting used to. You can't play, say, Super Smash Bros. Melee and expect the exact same thing you had in the original game. Likewise, you can't use the new site or BYOND 4.0 and expect it to behave like BYOND 314.
As for me, the site conversion wasn't very difficult. I always handled things by URL anyways. If I wanted to go to a hub, I'd likely just type in http://byond.com/developer/hub/hiead/textlib or something; to get to the forums I just type in http://developer.byond.com/forum (it handles redirecting me to www.byond.com/developer/forum automatically, of course).