BYOND isn't a joke; you just have users that don't contribute and complain that it's a joke while providing nothing to the community. they're needlessly hostile and vocal about it, but they don't actually *do* anything. those are the same kinds of users 'outside' of BYOND who say BYOND is a joke; they either have never used it, or have used it and never cared to actually learn about the engine or connect with people outside the existing community.

"do as I say, not as I do" syndrome and all.

BYOND has been around for... 15 years or so? Yet when it comes to creating high quality salable games, they're far and few in between. RPG Maker and Unity games are all over gaming websites (that don't require you to download a client just to play them) and if you add Unreal Engine to the list, you can find a bunch of Steam games to the list.

But you know, maybe you're right. Maybe people aren't taking full advantage of the language. Your target audience is hobbyists which are under no obligation to finish their games, or to strive for high quality games worth selling. And it's not like BYOND hasn't tied its hands behind its back. It only supports 2D or iso and even iso rendering tends to have issues. Resources for up and coming developers are piled away under HUGE piles of poorly made resources (the "wiki" issue). And the dichotomy of people playing games vs. people making games adds a social barrier within the community.

EDIT: I can't help but wonder how "alive" BYOND would be if some yahoo didn't go around on 4chan/reddit/9gag advertising Space Station 13.

Personally, I have a hard time justifying a choice to use BYOND. For programmers, Dream Maker isn't a language you can really stick on a resume and expect an employer to go "Ah, yes! Dream Maker!". But if you go to RPG Maker (Ruby) or Unity (C#, Javascript) you are provided experience in languages that employers know and want to see. Pixel artists? Well that issue goes back up to what I said earlier. You can't put a lot of BYOND games on a portfolio. Considering a bulk of games are fan-games, I'm not entirely sure it's something you'd want to put on your portfolio regardless (I'm not sure if IP troubles can hit there).

But if you're a hobbyist, it's fine to finish games at your own pace and you're not worried about the above. And the fact remains that communities are defined by their members and if BYOND is full of "do as I say, not as I do", then that's what BYOND is.

http://www.mapeditor.org/

i'd enjoy byond supporting this tool since byonds current map editing tool is more of a coder type thing and byond people really think mapping is a skill... its not.

Sample size too small. You're an OUTLIER. Not to mention you probably would've been better off using another platform but your platform is your choice.

Okay, so you've made your game, SW made NEStalgia, and IP made Casual Quest. That's 3 games in 15 years that are actually salable games. One game every five years? In a community this size? Meanwhile other engines are getting games out by the barge. Bethesda makes, what, one major release game a year? But that's just one studio. A community this size should be able to pop out at least 3 salable games A YEAR. We have 3000 active players-ish, right? If 1% of them are developers, that's 30 people. If only 10% of them are driven to make an actual game, we get our 3 games a year.

People need to stop looking at BYOND and saying, "Well if only we had good programmers and good artists, maybe we'd have good games" and think about WHY we don't have those things. Is it because of poor advertising on BYOND's part? Or is it because the alternatives are better?

My "hole" is me calling BYOND out on all of its flaws? Please tell me what about my post is "digging my hole".

SS13 is a popular chatroom game but it has no market value. Even if you tried to sell it, it wouldn't sell. It couldn't sell any more than babby's first game would sell. Practically minecraft server level, if you try to get more than... say 16 people on a game is lags and SS13 has a lot of loose physics going on which makes it lag so much faster (seriously, the source code is a mess).

I'm not worried about BYOND, I've already proposed several ways to "fix BYOND". I could be banned today and it still won't make too much of a difference (except cutting out one of my planned avenues of advertising my games made on other platforms). I'm really not sure how much longer BYOND can hold out. Thank goodness SS13 is so popular because it and the fangames are probably holding BYOND up with ad placement.

Of course, all this is veering off topic. I posed my thoughts on why BYOND couldn't collaborate with artist sites. If you've got an issue with my argument, address those points. Otherwise, you're really just trying to ostracize me for not being blind to BYOND.

A.T.H.K wrote:

Well Lugia, I'm afraid you've bested me. I've found no way to refute your points, so instead I'll just call you dead weight and a whiner because it's the only "meaningful" contribution I can make. Maybe I'll scare you off or something.

Well as long as you know when you're beat.

All I can say is go make your own software like BYOND, Unity, and RPG maker. And lets see how it fairs against BYOND and the rest.

NNAAAAHH wrote:

You don't offer ANYTHING.

Not true. I offer advice. Taking it is entirely at the discretion of the advisee.

Either work to make things better or stop wasting your time.

In case you haven't noticed, I have been working at that. I've been lobbying.

Can't say anyone here likes you, you try to ruin EVERY thread you post on.

Truly, I'm hurt. Obviously I'm only here to be liked. I don't ruin threads. People here seem to take my criticism personally and try to attack me in a defensive panic.

no one cares what you're 'going to do with UNITY'

You can't even make a claim like that. What if someone is interested in my Knight port to Unity?

I don't think a single person would complain, outside of yourself(probably go rant to people about how you 'did nothing'), if you were banned from posting.

Now we run into the moral conundrum of, "Is what everyone wants just?" Because Everyone "knew" OJ Simpson did it, but the courts ruled that he didn't. So do you blame the jury (mods) or the justice system (our system for making sure people are treated properly)? That's probably a college course in it of itself.

What BYOND lacks isn't capability. It's not suffering from only producing 2D games. It's suffering from people like you. It's suffering from the fact that EVERY time we get a decent developer here, people(LIKE YOU) drive them away from the community.

I never said it was lacking in producing only 2D games. I addressed the model, not the usage. Though I don't think I've ever personally driven someone from the community. And to be fair, if my "meanie words" drives someone away, then they probably wouldn't have handled it well here anyway. This community isn't very welcome with several trolls that practically exist to derail threads in llama pictures.

Forums were a decently pleasant place of late, then you decided to start the heaviest flow we've witnessed here and Yut Put came round to do his routine complaining, taking jabs at whomever is around at the time.

The whole idea of a forum is that it's an exchange of ideas. If my ideas offend you so dearly, you should probably block me :^)

Not saying you should kill yourself, just saying you probably don't deserve to live.

I'm not sure how to take this, but in several communities, such a claim would be deemed toxic; and at the very least warn-worthy. Human life is a precious thing.

You know what I find odd, is that it seems every thread seems to get redirected to be about me and my "negativity" when my first post was just my honest views on the situation. For some reason people on this forum have a very hard time sticking to topic and instead prefer to attack individuals!

Lugia319 wrote:

You don't offer ANYTHING.

Not true. I offer advice. Taking it is entirely at the discretion of the advisee.

AKA - Nothing. Worthless 'advisee' that no one needs or wants.

Either work to make things better or stop wasting your time.

In case you haven't noticed, I have been working at that. I've been lobbying.

How so? Just leave. Nothing you're doing or could do at this stage in your life will ever contribute anything positively to anything here.

Can't say anyone here likes you, you try to ruin EVERY thread you post on.

Truly, I'm hurt. Obviously I'm only here to be liked.

Nor should it be the reason you're here, but it should be a sign that you're doing something wrong. If everywhere you go there's a issue, it's more likely you that's the issue.

no one cares what you're 'going to do with UNITY'

You can't even make a claim like that. What if someone is interested in my Knight port to Unity?

Has anyone? If you're 'advertising' on BYOND, I take it as a sign that whatever you're doing is already a huge failure, especially based on your views of BYOND in general.

I don't think a single person would complain, outside of yourself(probably go rant to people about how you 'did nothing'), if you were banned from posting.

Now we run into the moral conundrum of, "Is what everyone wants just?" Because Everyone "knew" OJ Simpson did it, but the courts ruled that he didn't. So do you blame the jury (mods) or the justice system (our system for making sure people are treated properly)? That's probably a college course in it of itself.

Not even going to comment on your idiotic poisonous postings being compared to someone potentially losing their life in court based on whether or not people 'knew' someone committed a crime.

What BYOND lacks isn't capability. It's not suffering from only producing 2D games. It's suffering from people like you. It's suffering from the fact that EVERY time we get a decent developer here, people(LIKE YOU) drive them away from the community.

I never said it was lacking in producing only 2D games. I addressed the model, not the usage. Though I don't think I've ever personally driven someone from the community. And to be fair, if my "meanie words" drives someone away, then they probably wouldn't have handled it well here anyway. This community isn't very welcome with several trolls that practically exist to derail threads in llama pictures.

I doubt anyone has PERSONALLY driven anyone from BYOND; it's a group effort by PEOPLE LIKE YOU, as I've already repeated before.

Forums were a decently pleasant place of late, then you decided to start the heaviest flow we've witnessed here and Yut Put came round to do his routine complaining, taking jabs at whomever is around at the time.

The whole idea of a forum is that it's an exchange of ideas. If my ideas offend you so dearly, you should probably block me :^)

The whole idea of a forum is that it's a exchange of communication between a group of people on said forums, there are places for your 'ideas', which isn't the word for anything you've said, BYOND's varying sub-forums are not the place for anything you've posted.

Not saying you should kill yourself, just saying you probably don't deserve to live.

I'm not sure how to take this, but in several communities, such a claim would be deemed toxic; and at the very least warn-worthy. Human life is a precious thing.

Human life has potential to be precious. You have failed that VERY EASY potential, from what I can tell. You're, at this point, just shortening the human race's existence by that little bit, with every other waste around. It was originally a sarcastic remark regarding how useless your posts are, but I honestly believe it now applies.

You know what I find odd, is that it seems every thread seems to get redirected to be about me and my "negativity" when my first post was just my honest views on the situation. For some reason people on this forum have a very hard time sticking to topic and instead prefer to attack individuals!

Yes, odd that every post you're in end up falling victim to your negativity, with comments on it. You can try to justify it by saying 'I'm just stating my opinions!', like it makes a difference. There is a positive and a negative way to do things, you consistently linger on the negative side of things and shouldn't be here with a attitude like that. When I can't enjoy the forums because every time you show up in a thread, you ruin it; it makes me stay away for longer and longer periods, waiting for you to get out. Sadly, people like you don't take the hints from everyone else and have to end up banned for a extended time before they go away. Just keep thinking what's wrong here is everyone else, what's wrong is BYOND and it's limitations, you're master developer humanist that never does any harm to anyone, your opinion is master of everyone and should be seen/heard by everyone. Glad you're too useless to be the next Hitler.