Seriously. 99.99% of the time I'm on BYOND is via my phone. We deserve some love too.

Doesn't need to be a redesigned website, just needs added responsiveness. Please Lummox.

That's extremely slow for whatever reason. Probably needs to be looked at.

I don't think volunteer work is an option, but I've always been up for helping with the websites appearance. I might not be much help with making everything work well on mobiles, which we really need, but I'd be able to help a lot with styling or maybe updating some images.

The appearance of a website is my specialty, not the backend.

Lummox JR wrote:

HTML changes are never trivial.

I have to say that these kind of statements really bother me and I've heard plenty of those so far in my short time here since September.

I know that if the software/site is developed correctly a lot of things are trivial to change and should take no more than 15 minutes of your time, so it doesn't make sense to me why you're implying that any change is not trivial.

And I don't think it's just me.

Recently I reported a bug with savefiles where the savefile wasn't closed correctly. Not only is savefile.Flush() still not part of the language which to me sounds trivial because you could get away with copy/pasting the code for savefile.ExportText() and removing the parts that deal with creating the text file, but the documentation also hasn't been updated to reflect the behavior of fdel() which if used on an open savefile sets savefile objects to null which may confuse developers.

Obviously I can't say with certainty that savefile.Flush() would be trivial since I'm on the outside looking in, but I know that updating the DM Reference is trivial because there's no actual programming involved, just modifying the text.

My greatest fear working with the BYOND language is that one day you'll quit working on it and the language will be open-sourced. At that point, I feel any project I have is going to be moot because the community is set up in such a way that a lot of copycats are going to pop up & I won't have any official way of publishing my work without having to deal with the engine. An engine which I frequently hear complaining about due to its age and lack of modern language support (i.e., lack of C++11 support, compiler is difficult to modify).

When I post a thread in Feature Requests or Bug Reports I don't expect it to be resolved in a month or even a year. But I do expect that a trivial change should be implemented alongside the bigger changes. From what I understand you're a bit of a "feature guy" in that you like to focus on adding larger features. But you're missing out on the smaller things that you could add in-between, be it a savefile.Flush() or updating the reference or some other trivial suggestion or bug.

These larger features are going to take up a lot of time, and IMO it's best to improve the software overall even if it means that the larger feature is going to be delayed by a week.

I don't need support for splittext and regular expressions, because I can already do that by adding my own C/C++ library. But what I do need is the assurance that if I write stuff to a savefile that it closes properly, or if I paste something in Dream Maker that it doesn't outright crash, or if I release something for the webclient that my players aren't going to have to provide their username and password every single time they want to play my game. These are the things I can't change, and it bothers me that those are ignored in favor of some additional flair that, while immensely useful, can ultimately be worked around for the time being by existing developers.

I'm sorry about this rant, but once I'm ready to continue with my project on BYOND I'm seriously considering if I should even continue my project here or if it'd be better to just write my own client/server solution with websockets and a HTML5 canvas element. The reason that I'd like to use this language is to remove the burden of having to write and maintain my own engine, but with the limitations as they are and the lackluster response to some of these trivial changes I don't know if this boat is going to stay afloat for very long.

I really, really, really hope that you're open to discussion on how to improve this process overall.

Please remember that you're surrounded by other developers who, although each and every one has a different take on how things should be done, could help you with all sorts of things. You want to enlist my help to build a text handling library in C/C++? I can do that! Need an authentication API for other users to authenticate users against? I can build that too, and provide you with access so you can confirm that it's safe! And it's not just me -- I'm sure that plenty of developers would be willing to help in those aspects. But at least to me, you're a closed book. You don't ask for help easily, and when you do it seems to be kept private.

BYOND has donations set up for funding, but what it really needs is developers to step up to help improve the language, because you can't do it alone. It'll take too long, and BYOND has already stagnated long enough. It's the 19th of December, the month of donations and giving, and the donation bar is only just over $1,500. This is not going to survive in the long run, not without others pitching in.

NullQuery wrote:
It's the 19th of December, the month of donations and giving, and the donation bar is only just over $1,500. This is not going to survive in the long run, not without others pitching in.

I hate it when Lummox does that, sorry but if people don't see real progress they will not support something that moves worst then a snail, This Webclient took alot of time to make and its still no where near to be finished it will take at least another 3 years and by then we are going to already have new technologies and there is already few other software developers who are working on similar engines as byond but alot more capable and alot less limited to what it can do. The Dream Maker its just a mess the efforts you need to put in to make Icons to edit icons, to Edit Code, to Edit the Map the slowness of it all. We have Monster PC's that can load up Programs in matter of half a secs, and yet with Byond and Dream Maker you need few min to compile or open something, All of this needs to be address and needs to happen quickly because its 2015 now and soon its 2016 and we gonna have this same disscution in 2025(If we get there). What lummox needs to do its to get his you know what together and realise he can't do this alone he needs more people to work on this and work fast people won't wait forever they will move on and they are moving on quickly.

Sorry for rant also :V

The menu would need to be responsive too -- could just use bootstrap to keep it simple.

That means byond isnt doing good at all. Because it isnt standing on its own. His loosing the money his making to keep this afloat.

Zasif wrote:

That means byond isnt doing good at all. Because it isnt standing on its own. His loosing the money his making to keep this afloat.

A company doesn't have to be making money to stay afloat, it's just a benefit.