Sep 16 2016, 8:08 am
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Lugia319
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Or... just use Unity, UE, RPG Maker, etc. There's really no reason to use BYOND anymore outside of babby's first game.
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Without getting into the weeds on any of this, one thing I feel I should clarify is that my opinion of whether a game will be good or not, or whether I personally like it, is not a factor in standalone approval.
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if you want to make a game using the BYOND engine that has no ties to BYOND at all, you'd need to only be able to distribute it with an equivalent of BYONDexe, and your access to hub services would have to be limited; all the hub-related procs and vars, e.g. world.SetScores(), client.IsSubscribed(), etc., would have to be disabled. Ideally, this would just be a simple compiler flag. client/authenticate = 0 This divorces the game of the hub about as far as you can get. There are ways to prevent ads from occurring when you log into a game without distributing a modified DreamSeeker, but... I'll keep my mouth shut. There are also ways to compile your game into a standalone exe without BYONDexe, but... again. TL;DR: If you actually want to get rid of hub-based authentication, keys, ad service, and distribute your game on your own, it is currently not only completely feasible, but incredibly easy to do. You just need to have a minimum level of competence OUTSIDE of DM to understand how to do it. The reason nobody but me has figured most of these things out is because... Well, this community relies far too much on other people just giving them things for free, and lacks basic critical thinking skills that would lead to the discovery/development of two of these ideas in particular. | |
It's also possible to have a kind of hybrid standalone system, that downloads and installs, or updates BYOND as part of a game's installation process. It would be effectively the same as if the user had done all of it manually, so there shouldn't be any issue.
I don't think it makes sense to prevent any sort of game from becoming standalone. If the fan rips want to leave, let them go! The further away they are from the rest of BYOND, the better. Imprisoning these zombie games within the BYOND hub doesn't help BYOND or anyone who uses it. If they have nowhere else to go, they are never going to leave. Let's show them the door! What could possibly go wrong? | |
I don't think it makes sense to prevent any sort of game from becoming standalone. Problem with that is that BYONDexe has no means of recouping revenue from projects unless it tracks and enforces its licensing agreement. It is effectively a gentleman's agreement. Lummox has no control over what anybody hosts with BYOND. The ads are injected as a toll to reach his servers. Lummox does have direct control over who accesses BYONDexe. He has to in order to track and enforce revenue sharing. The point isn't that Lummox needs to make money off of fangames. On the contrary, Lummox needs to recoup the costs of development and serving traffic otherwise the product WILL die and services WILL end. By not controlling who has access to BYONDexe, Lummox can't enforce the revenue sharing policy. If he accepts BYONDexe revenue from fangames, he's in legal peril because he's directly profiting from copyright infringement. This is different than ads because he himself is not providing copyrighted content or directly accepting the proceeds of copyright infringement, instead he is taxing a service HE provides regardless of what's on the other end of the gateway. The EULA explicitly forbids using the software to violate all laws, local, federal, and international. Using the software to infringe copyright is a violation of this EULA. He has notified his userbase via the licensing agreement that they indemnify Lummox of all responsibility for their actions using the software. In other words, those who are making fangames are violating BYOND's licensing agreement and Lummox is not responsible for your actions ultimately resulting in ad revenue being generated by your illegal hosting of copyrighted content. The final word in the subject is simply this: If Lummox explicitly grants fangames the ability to use BYONDexe and he accepts manually drafted checks from the developers of fangames, he will be putting himself in legal peril because accepting this money is tantamount to a direct business involvement. Meanwhile, the ad revenue is anonymized in such a way that legally he cannot be expected to determine the source and either whitelist or blacklist the ads from particular connections. If Lummox refuses checks from fangames, he's not enforcing the license agreement, which puts an undue burden on those who he does draw the revenue share from. Worse yet, this gives those people not creating fangames an excuse to not abide the license agreement because it is not being adequately enforced. It's not fine like it is, but we need a model that doesn't involve a bunch of freeloaders demanding that everything be free, and that model has to be viable for what BYOND is. These discussions always, always, always start and are predominantly contributed to by people who: 1) Don't make games. 2) Don't have any membership history to speak of. 3) Don't have any knowledge of how to run a business. 4) Don't know how to market a product. 5) Don't contribute to the community monetarily or voluntarily. Point is, shouting into the wind isn't a business plan. A viable business plan that we could achieve with the resources we have available isn't just pointing out how the current model is flawed and complaining about how things aren't free/fair. | |
Lummox JR releasing a free version of BYONDexe doesn't mean he is violating laws. I am simply suggesting that BYONDexe have ads enforced by default. If a developer doesn't want the ads, then they would need to go through the current agreement process we have now to remove them. If the ads are removed through other means, or if fangames use the free version, then that should violate BYOND's EULA.
It really isn't that complicated. BYOND will fail if doesn't have some kind of free distribution system outside itself. Just games existing outside of BYOND would serve as free advertising. SS13 is currently the most popular BYOND game, and it's free and open-source. I think it would make sense if they could use a free version of BYONDexe, with ads. Also, demonizing those without membership isn't a selling point, so you better stop now. | |
releasing a free version of BYONDexe What's stopping fangames from packaging their games in a downloadable format and distributing them outside of BYOND? You don't need BYONDexe to do that. What you just said: "A free version of BYONDexe with ads" is already possible. It's called Dreamseeker. Provided the correct portions of BYOND's binaries are distributed and installed in the correct places, there's nothing stopping fangames from distributing a limited BYOND installer. There are hundreds of tools out there for creating this installer completely free of charge. You can even gather the live server information for a specific hub entry using http requests to populate and display a list of live servers and their IPs. What's stopping them other than not wanting to put the work in to do it? | |
I don't know that it's legal to actually repackage part of BYOND and release it with your game. At the very least it might be in violation of BYOND's EULA. BYONDexe is seen as the only acceptable route to becoming standalone. Nobody considers going standalone because Dream Maker doesn't provide a built-in method for doing so.
Sure, fangame "coders" probably don't want to put the work in, but it would be more likely to happen if such a thing was actually presented as an option. If they can make hub pages, they can go standalone, and it's better for everyone if they do. | |
I don't know that it's legal to actually repackage part of BYOND and release it with your game. At the very least it might be in violation of BYOND's EULA. It's a violation of BYOND's EULA as well as you know, actual civil provisions enforced by people that actually have the money to sue, to make and host fangames with the software in the first place. Therefore, if they don't care about the consequences of actually getting shut down and sued, they probably won't care much about the consequences of Lummox waggling a finger on the off chance he figures out what they are doing. So let's dispel with the fiction that those hosting fangames actually care or understand about things like licensing agreements and pesky laws. Nobody considers going standalone because Dream Maker doesn't provide a built-in method for doing so. And there it is. The majority of people that use BYOND want to click a "Make game" button and have a fully furnished masterpiece without putting any of the work in. One of the threads/conversations that pops up tangentially to this one is how the power users are elitists that don't help anyone. I've got 46 tutorials released compared to Forum_account's 30-something, and Falacy's nine. Yet those two users are lauded as BYOND's best teachers. They weren't. They wrote libraries that a lot of people downloaded and used to completely destroy their games' performance. The reason they were well liked was not because they actually taught people well, but because they gave them free shit. So what if the free shit hurt them in the long run? It was still free, and apparently we love free shit more than hard work. Lazy, unmotivated, uncreative, entitled community. Doesn't matter that we're represented by cynical assholes like myself. It's the laziness and entitlement that's our death sentence. | |
I will say to FA's credit that he tried. His libraries did some stuff that was difficult at the time for newbies to handle; they had some flaws, although I think the majority of those flaws were in the fact that the libraries didn't play well with outside code.
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I think the majority of those flaws were in the fact that the libraries didn't play well with outside code. More to do with the fact that he completely misunderstood how the engine worked at a fundamental level and taught techniques that were... Well, suboptimal in the first place. They worked well enough in an isolated environment, but when expanded to the scope of a game, they didn't leave much room for the game itself. His libraries had such massive performance/usability costs that for a while, there was a widespread notion that ALL libraries were bad. | |
Indeed. He did a lot of ambitious stuff without taking the time to necessarily work out how the engine handled any of that, and I seem to recall a lot of algorithms that were questionable.
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Legal methods should be used in any and all contexts. This doesn't just apply to fangames either. A built-in standalone build system would be just as convenient for developers with legitimate projects. The point you are trying to make there is null.
Please don't put Forum_account in the same boat as Falacy. They developed for completely different audiences, and Falacy's stuff isn't even worth mentioning. Forum_account's libraries are clunky, but I'm sure that they helped quite a few new developers discover some of the things that BYOND can do. Whether you like it or not, his work was an important milestone in BYOND development. | |
A couple of things I want to point out Ter.
1) If you saw in the post I posted, I wasn't saying "follow my ideas, this is how BYOND will be successful" what I was alluding to is we need to shake up the formula is SOME way. The whole point of this topic wasn't about BYONDexe being available to everyone. It was an idea I had to shake up the formula, but it came off to everyone negatively. I understand the problems with releasing it, even behind a paywall kiddes can't use their mom's credit cards for. I even asked at the end of the post that if you guys had any alternative ideas that weren't as brash as mine, please tell us. From the sound of it, you guys ok with the current formula around here. I'm not just referring to what people call "The Elitists" around here either. I mean everyone. If you or anyone are going to complain about fan-games (this post was more AGAINST them than for them) yet nothing is done about them, then you sound annoying and your words have no meaning. I could've came out here and made the title "How to stop fan-games" but no, I gave "hints" in my first post without saying it. If you want changes, it starts with the man in the mirror. (or in this case, BYOND as a whole) 2) I'm actually glad you bring up your tutorials. I'll be the first one to say I love them, and truly appreciate what you've done for the community and guys like me who want to be programmers and not script kiddies. However, there is one problem that irks me with them. You can say it's my fault because I should google more often, however, if that were the case, I'd be googling for 2 hours. The code you write and steps you show us are not hard. What's difficult for new programmers is the concepts behind them. What do I mean? Most people who come here only study BYOND. They don't go out and explore more programming techniques because they're new and don't want to be overloaded with knowledge to the point of stress. Do I agree they need to get off their ass and google? To some degree, yes. But that concept may lead into other concepts needed to do that concept, and then it becomes a tree of google searching. Most people with a job, kids, etc do not have time to do that kind of research. TL;DR An outside reference explaining what the concept is in detail wouldn't hurt. You don't even need to write it out, just link it from another website. Think of it as a essay on history. You need citations. That's all I'm personally asking (others might have different ideas of what's wrong, but I feel like this main focus) If it is there and I'm just typing for the sake of typing, please let me know. Again, this thread was a discussion thread, not one to start arguments. | |
Ter13 thinks he's half the community helper FA/Fallacy are. That's rich.
Fallacy and FA are lauded because they were genuine community members. Ter13 gives faulty advice (for the sake of learning, surely), berates fangames (nothing makes people want to make games more than that huh), and belittles members like Developous. Ter13 earned their poor reputation. | |
Most people with a job, kids, etc do not have time to do that kind of research. lets be honest, no one in those fangames has a job or reproduces | |
A built-in standalone build system would be just as convenient for developers with legitimate projects. The point you are trying to make there is null. The reason they aren't already doing it isn't because it's illegal. They aren't doing it because they are incompetent and lazy. It doesn't really matter either way, though, because we stand to have nothing to gain from them migrating to the wider web. The minute people tell them what their games actually ARE (shit), they will get discouraged and stop going to those sites. Have you wondered why most of the people who play/make BYOND rips don't hang out on these forums? It's because they get feedback about their games and then decide: "Hey, these people are being dicks. We shouldn't go there.". They aren't interested in the feedback, and the feedback isn't a matter of subjective taste. Imagine what the wider web would do to these games. Metaphor time: Let's say you take a shit in a box and try to sell it to someone on the street, and tell them it's shit in a box. There's a niche for that kind of product, but it's very small and hard to find. What happens if apple takes a shit in a box, puts their logo on the box, and then tries to sell it as the new ishit? Not only do you not sell many ishits, but you also associate the brand Apple with shit in a box. (As though that weren't already the case). When someone sees a brand name on a substandard product, they instantly associate that brand name with those substandard products. Any substandard product offered by a brand then becomes the currency of that brand. Good and bad product lines from that brand suffer alike as the bad product dilutes the value of the good product. Unity has established itself as a leader in indie and professional simulation and game development software. Why? Because they marketed the brand by selecting the best of the best and associating those products with their brand. They spent tons of money marketing and polishing their product, as well as sculpting the product's public image. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56xOx8xVHyM Unreal has established itself as a leader in the indie and professional cinematic and game development software world. Why? Because they established a proven track record of quality, value, and support. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFpdx1wDOoU GameMaker has established itself as a fairly good deal for small indie teams. Why? Because they established a proven track record for being the end-all-be-all of garage game development on a shoestring budget. Even though that is no longer what the software is. It is leaps and bounds from where it once was, but its reputation is still well below that which the current state of the software deserves. They have done heavy sculpting of their product. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeSfnKQTCWw BYOND? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGuHgxgI0NY TL;DR: The point is that if we make it easier for the cistern to spread over the wider internet, best case scenario, we further smear shit all over the engine's public image to yet more people who haven't heard of us. Worst case? We lose what little revenue we have. It's so bad that most of us making games with the engine that don't look/play like BYOND games have to hide what engine we're using when showing them off away from this site. | |
If you or anyone are going to complain about fan-games (this post was more AGAINST them than for them) yet nothing is done about them, then you sound annoying and your words have no meaning. I could've came out here and made the title "How to stop fan-games" but no, I gave "hints" in my first post without saying it. If you want changes, it starts with the man in the mirror. (or in this case, BYOND as a whole) I'm not against fangames. I just don't think they matter, and I don't think they will ever be something we should focus any effort on at all, be that getting rid of them, or enabling them to be anything more than they are. What's difficult for new programmers is the concepts behind them. What do I mean? Most people who come here only study BYOND. They don't go out and explore more programming techniques because they're new and don't want to be overloaded with knowledge to the point of stress. When have I ever turned down a chance to expand on an issue and explain something in depth? If you have specific examples for where my tutorials lose you, feel free. I can't know what parts aren't common sense to you because I've been doing this for almost two decades. Every time I ask someone how I can improve my tutorials, I get a nebulous answer that asks questions that are explicitly answered in the tutorial already, or just silence. What I can't stand, is people that throw their hands up and shout: "It can't be this hard!". It is hard. Learning programming is hard at first, but once you learn the basics, the un-fun stuff, it gets a lot easier to do the fun stuff. Making it easy is not the solution to self-improvement. The solution to improving yourself is sticking with it when it's the hardest thing you've ever done because the next time you tackle a challenge, the difficulty will be that much easier to conquer. Call that elitism if you will, but I call that basic drive and determination. If you don't have it, you aren't going to succeed at much of anything in life. Also, I know I come off as acerbic and toxic in a lot of cases. I'm really not directing that at any one person or game in particular, just at trends that disappoint me. The reason I'm blunt is because I don't have the energy anymore to gently waft points under peoples' faces. No point sweetly making them think that they are coming to an understanding of reality of their own accord when I can just hammer the point in loud and hard and be done with it. No need to tiptoe. Multiverse, I don't think the idea is bad per se. I just think there are a lot of complications with it that make it at best pointless and at worst, destructive. If I had a successful business model, I'd 100% offer it. I think it comes down to marketing the engine in a positive light. A highlight reel would be a great start, but BYOND lacks but three games I'd put on a highlight reel. It has to start there: with the games. | |
By no means do I think you never helped anyone on an issue with your tutorials. If anything, I was giving advice on how you can decrease those kind of comments in your tutorials.
As far as the drive goes, that's more on my end then yours. For most of my life I could never tell whether a comment was in malice or positivity (not just on BYOND but the Internet in general) hell, even in real life sometimes. When I read a person, I take it as negative so it's blunt and the pain isn't as bad. If I took everything in a positive light, and it ended up being negative, it would hurt a hell of a lot more. But enough about me. If you want to drive people for the better, then I applaud that. It shows how awesome you are. I'll take that in consideration (Hell, I might just binge all your tutorials tonight to nail this--or atleast some of it) As far as games being first, I agree on that. A highlight reel would be cool. I'm going to stop commenting in here now. I've got work to do :) | |
<3 cheers.
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