You did not read my first post clearly. Useless answers lead to useless solutions.

This is your opinion. And the answers are not useless. Go and look at some of the questions I've answered or commented on the answers of.

Most people aren't providing broken code - if they do, it gets fixed. Most of the time, they're providing code that does nothing at all and then asking us to write an entire block of functionality for them.

what's wrong with it and tell them how to fix it without code,

This is what does happen, and what you just dismissed as 'useless answers.'

The issue is not people being unfair to everyone who asks a question. The issue is people asking bad questions. And yes, there are bad questions.
'how do I make a ban verb?' is not a bad question. It is a naivé question.
When someone then explains the logic behind a ban verb, and the person goes;
'i don't understand can u show me?'
THAT is a bad question.

Deathguard wrote:

You did not read my first post clearly. Useless answers lead to useless solutions.

This is your opinion. And the answers are not useless. Go and look at some of the questions I've answered or commented on the answers of.

Most people aren't providing broken code - if they do, it gets fixed. Most of the time, they're providing code that does nothing at all and then asking us to write an entire block of functionality for them.

No, they are asking for how to fix the code. They never say they wanted code. I could understand if it says "Fix my code you're my ***** give me code" but that's not the case here clearly.

what's wrong with it and tell them how to fix it without code,

This is what does happen, and what you just dismissed as 'useless answers.'

Wait, so telling them what's wrong with the code is saying to find it out yourself?

I never said all answers were useless, I said most are.

Deathguard wrote:

They never say they wanted code.

This happens all the time. They may not come out and say 'Give me the code,' but they essentially wave off answers that dont' involve giving them code.

Go and study Developer Help. Like ... the first three pages of it.

The problem is that some people do not want to learn to write DM because learning takes a lot of time and effort.
They like the IDEA of writing DM, so they will sort of try and write it, not get very far, and then try and have people write it for them.

So then we have to alienate the people even if they want to? I remember my first dev help question was ruled off as asking for code when clearly I had been told to Google it.

If they rule out the real solution, then they may be asking for code, but to be safe I would break down their code and tell them what they can do to fix it or what they can add to it to fix it. If they severely decide to say that's not a solution, then you can ignore it, but don't just pop up your first answer saying to figure it out yourself.

DarkCampainger wrote:

You say that we don't need more "oldbies", but who do you expect to answer all of these question in a thorough and helpful manner? Dissecting someone else's code line-by-line is a time-consuming thing and requires a solid understanding of the language and programming in general. Most of the people who post "go google it" or "we won't help you make your rip" (and I rarely see this) are newbies themselves.

You seem to be laying out a lot of work, but I'm not sure who you expect to do it. How many questions have you answered?

I may not have answered many questions myself, although I'm sure if someone knew at least half of what they need to in DM (which is more than what I know) and more active, we could get questions answered. Most of why people use the quotes I have stated is because they judge people that are new in saying they rip games.

Newbies wouldn't call newbies rippers unless they themselves were not newbies.

Anyways, it's a dead topic, but thanks for replying at least without raging! :)

Cloud Magic wrote:

Maybe SilkWizard would write up his success story, or make a YouTube Video (or both) that could go on the front page.

Uh, he sort of did already.

Anyways, we get about roughly fifty posts per year about someone complaining about BYOND and its reputation. Quite frankly, anything you say won't have an impact on this community and its developers - step up to the plate; actions speak louder than words.

Multiverse7 wrote:

The BYOND software itself just isn't getting enough advertising.

BYOND doesn't do any advertising so it's hard to argue with that, but...

BYOND has been around for long enough that many game developers must have stumbled upon it. From the looks of it, hardly any of them decided to use it. BYOND just doesn't look like a serious game development tool. It's not that BYOND has a bad reputation (most people have never heard of it and have no opinion of it) that causes people to decide to use different game development tools. With no prior knowledge of BYOND, people look at it and just decide to use something else. Most of the BYOND website is dedicated to playing games, so most people probably don't even realize BYOND is used to make games too.

You just have to think of things from a new user's perspective:

1. The installer has that sketchy looking borderless "welcome BYOND" popup that fades out and the download popups (the one that shows the download's progress and the one that asks if you want to play by yourself or host the game) don't have borders either. Those are the kind of effects I expect from a Photoshop keygen program. The installer also creates a desktop icon without asking if you want it and has a vague prompt at the end (something like "look for games to play?" - people won't know what that means). It might help to have two separate downloads (one to install the game playing software and one to install the game development tools) or to have an option in the installer that says "would you like to install the game development tools too?". Two installers might seem bad, but realize it'd mean there'd be a page on the BYOND website that says in big letters "click *here* to download the BYOND game development kit" - this makes it 100% obvious that BYOND can be used to make games.

2. The pager looks weird and outdated. The system tray icon is nice (except for the "you've got updates" balloons) but the window is just strange looking. People won't know what it is or what it's supposed to be used for. It's kind of for chatting but it looks nothing like a chat program. It lists the games you've downloaded but in a dropdown menu. Download the icons of the games from the website and show something that looks like the hub's search results, but in a nice-looking application kind of way. Maybe even have it pull content from the website so you can essentially browse the byond.com/games site through the pager.

3. The game development tools are hard to find. People have to either know to look for dreammaker.exe or know to go to File -> Start Dream Maker in the pager. How are people supposed to know what Dream Maker is? How are people supposed to know there's a game development tool inside the BYOND software?

4. Game distribution options are confusing. The BYOND hub is confusing, even to current BYOND users who browse the forums frequently. If the pager was better and had the capabilities I mentioned here, people would at least see the hub and say "oh, that's how you get your game list in the pager" (except they wouldn't call it "the pager"). The ability to package games as an .exe has always had limited support/practicality but hopefully this will be improving soon.

5. The BYOND nomenclature is confusing, alienating, and unnecessary. They're not "keys", they're "usernames", "user accounts", or "accounts". It's not "Dream Maker", it's "the IDE" or "the game development kit". It's not "Dream Seeker", it's the "game client". It's not "the pager", it's just "BYOND". The average grandmother can create a youtube account and upload a video, but wouldn't stand a chance at figuring out BYOND.

BYOND isn't the only program of its kind. Look at other software and see how it looks and works. People don't use BYOND because they simply have no idea what it is. The people that have figured it out seem to like it but most people don't understand it, feel alienated, and use something else instead. BYOND is the weird kid who sits in the back of the classroom and does nothing but draw pictures of dragons. He might be a perfectly nice person, he might be funny, he might make a good friend, but nobody will ever know because he's so weird that everyone is afraid to approach him. BYOND can be different and unique while still conforming to the set of norms that people expect software to adhere to.

I don't think people are getting confused by the site. Go to http://www.byond.com. it's pretty clear that this is a system to play and create games. The left side says "Play" in big letters and the right side says "Create". I know this generation is pretty ADD-riddled but I'm pretty sure they can figure this out.

I guess we could have two separate installers although I doubt it would matter (technically speaking the systems share the same libraries so it wouldn't be a "lite" download for the players-only). One reason I want players downloading the compiler is so that they can experiment with making games after being inspired by those they play.

The pager is outdated. We actually have a more modern UI for it that uses a browser and fancy icons etc. in the existing distribution (there might even be a way to activate it), but after playing with it for a while we realized that it would probably lead to more complaints than benefits because the usability was a bit sketchy. But that's something I plan on revisiting. It depends largely on how we decide to go with our web-based games as it may make more sense to have all of our pager/chatting on-site rather than through the hub.

The biggest problem with getting new developers is simply having them find out about BYOND. When you do a web search for things like "multiplayer game creation" BYOND should show up on the first page but it doesn't. We've tried SEO approaches and got a few keywords this way but we are largely unknown. We could try paying for ads but I've always been pretty skeptical of that. Of course a lot of developers are going to look at BYOND and decide it isn't for them, but I don't think that's out of confusion, since the first page they see makes it pretty clear what this is.

Ultimately, I believe, and have always believed, that the success of BYOND is completely contingent on the success of BYOND games. When NEStalgia was in the spotlight for a few months, we had our biggest traffic ever and I'm sure some of those people stuck around to try making games. Regardless, NEStalgia being successful helps us because it uses the BYOND subscription system so even if it doesn't bring users, it brings money, which we can push towards development and advertisement. Now that was just a blip, but if we were to have a game with some real long-term success, it would do wonders for the development community. Imagine if a game with the success of Minecraft had been written in DM-- you don't think other people would want to do the same thing? And I do believe it is very possible to make a commercially successful game through BYOND, because a game doesn't have to have fancy glitz to be popular, and casual multiplayer is still a huge, untapped market. We have games on here that get 100 players, and that's basically from our existing pool of 5-10K users. Get some real press and that will look like nothing.

It's also kind of sad when BYOND's only "good", known, and advertised game (ignoring Space Station 13's popularity and reputation outside of BYOND) is just based on concepts from games from the 1980s...and that's pretty much what the name of the game implies. If all BYOND is known to do is to recreate the style of games from 20 years ago...I don't think that'll interest or attract anyone.

Forum_account wrote:

Having a good and successful game shows what BYOND is capable of but doesn't make it appealing to use and that's ultimately what matters.

I agree with this. The BYOND IDE does need to give a better first impression, but as I was saying, if potential developers never even hear about the BYOND suite, then the first impression it gives won't even matter. I don't think BYOND should rely on popular games to do all the advertising for it. In the future, there will likely be plenty of standalone and flash client based games that won't even advertise that they were made with BYOND. The only way you could know with a standalone is to look through the DLLs in the installation files, but who does that? With the flash client, players might not have a clue that some games have been made with BYOND.

This is why BYOND needs its own advertising. With the introduction of standalone and flash clients, the advertising will need to be increasingly geared towards potential game developers. Leave it to the individual game communities to advertise for new players.

So, like I said, BYOND needs people to write about it all across the web.

BYOND needs a real Wikipedia article, as well as an article on the DM language itself. Tons of smart people use that encyclopedia for information, and if those people happen to be potential game developers, they might not notice BYOND in the list of suites.

BYOND also needs external download mirrors in popular sites, like CNET. There, the software will be much more likely to get reviewed.

More importantly, all of these things will add up to raise the level of BYOND in google search results, when people search for things like "multiplayer game creation".

I think advertising should be more of a priority than making the program look nice. If you are an author, and want to promote your book, do you spend more time working on the front cover, or advertising and spreading the word of its existence? The answer should be obvious, and it should work for BYOND as well.

If BYOND doesn't appeal to game developers the way it is, increasing its exposure will just give more people a bad impression of it.

Using games to increase BYOND's exposure isn't a bad idea. It could work. I'm sure there are a lot of people who know what Multimedia Fusion is only because Knytt was made with it. The reason this doesn't work is because BYOND doesn't appeal to game developers. NEStalgia brought in some people and I'm sure some of them thought "hey, I'd like to make a game like this", but most didn't choose to use BYOND.

Imagine a youtube video that shows someone going to the website, downloading BYOND, and opening Dream Maker. They make a few icons, write some code, then make a map. When they run the game, it shows that with very little effort you can get something that looks like a game. Then - this is the important part - they host the game and IM their friends a byond:// link to join the world. Their friends join the game and you can see their mobs moving around the world too. To have a four minute video that shows how easy it is to make a multiplayer game would be impressive*. This could be used to give BYOND more exposure and make it look appealing at the same time.

* It'd be as impressive as the game is. With the odd/clunky default Dream Seeker interface and the choppy movement, it might not be that impressive. The networking is what would be appealing, the rest of it just has to not look terrible. With some very small changes and a little bit of work (to make these videos) you could change BYOND from being an awkward/sketchy program to being an honestly impressive game development kit.