BYOND in my opinion is a good engine that is easily misunderstood and overlooked rather than appreciated and loved, the engine has already come this far and i am sure somewhere in the next updates the engine will be even more better

I don't see BYOND one day with a UI editor or a full Linux and Mac support, but i see it improving upon it's core ideas and making it more efficient and even easier to learn and use

That's why i use BYOND a lot of the times for rapid prototyping before moving my ideas back to Unity or GMS2, it's extremely fast and easy to make your dream truly come true

as for why i never released a full real game before, it's simply because my games were never really good enough to be on this website, and if all of us start uploading rubbish rushed and poorly looking games, we all would gain the same reputation as Unity's, where a perfect engine name falls down just because of the user's fault,

I do have plans for releasing one project sometime around the end of this year or next summer along side my revival projects for Pyrce-High and The Wizards Chronicles but again, who knows what mid development problems wait for me?

I was introduced to BYOND by a friend years ago where I took my first baby steps into the world of programming. It was simple to understand and its individual parts are less complex than C++ pointers (which are really pretty simple after they just "click").

I realized years ago that I wouldn't be the programmer I am today without BYOND and I think that's a purpose it can never outgrow.

BYOND taught you just enough programming to begin learning how to make games. Resources like Unity, GameMaker and even trying to design your own required a knowledge base that most 14-year-olds just weren't ready to grasp yet.

BYOND made that first step vastly less daunting and packaged it in a way that was extremely progressive as far as game engine simplicity goes.

Genesismagician wrote:

MaxIsJoe wrote:

as for why i never released a full real game before, it's simply because my games were never really good enough to be on this website

You do know that 90% of the games on byond are just rips and not worthy of being on here to begin with, right?

Then why hop on the same boat?
It's better off to make something original and well crafted than making another broken RPG copy-cat.
And if something new is good it might become the next Space Station 13, remember, a lot of people are stuck here with BYOND just because Space Station 13, so, why not expand that list a bit and give players awesome new games that are unique just like SS13?

Edit : Not everyone here is stuck with BYOND just because SS13, but a huge chunk of players are.

Konlet wrote:

The advertising and marketing of BYOND isn't too ambitious...

Last time I checked there wasn't any advertisement for BYOND at all.

So yea I guess. Zero certainly isn't very ambitious. lol

, so if Lummox really wanted to focus on that then it could turn a corner

It'd be nice, but I doubt it would ever happen. I think the general "philosophy" was that individual game developers should market their own game, not the engine guy(s).

Don't forget to come up for air. :P

MaxIsJoe wrote:

Then why hop on the same boat?

I don't... I rarely even come on BYOND anymore and when I do, it's mainly to check the forums. Once every few months, I spend a few hours working on a custom game I've been tinkering with for a few years but as I've been here since 2001, I personally find programming to be a chore these days and I completely lack motivation. Hell, the game I work on is playable, it's just lacking much content and I see BYONDs community sorely lacking any decent people who could be a decent player base for my game so I don't see much point in publishing a game that lacks players as most of the community wants some anime-afk training rip or SS13(which I'm not a fan of any of these selections).

My overall point is, I've just outgrown BYOND, I simply come here out of habit these days and I have no real interest in it anymore. However, I will admit that the BYOND community does have the capabilities to become much more popular, I just don't see it happening. Now, I'm sure there will be replies to my post completely disagreeing with me and that's perfectly fine, I really couldn't care less but this is just my own personal opinion.

Yeah, I gotta agree with Ter's sentiment. There isn't really much of a "community" left anymore other than the SS13 crowd.

The people still on the forums are, for the most part, the developers who've always been here for years. BYOND's in its twilight years, but it's far from dead. We're never going to see another renaissance, but honestly I'm okay with that.

Well... mostly okay with it. I still wish all of the old-school roleplaying games were still around like Mitadake High. Good times.

Kyuukei wrote:

returning to BYOND for one last project or moving to unity to get back into actual game making.

I could say many things about BYOND, but I cannot deny that games made with it are in fact real.

Honestly, there's a lot of idea thieving and hateration in this community. And people have a tendency to want to one-up one another. This means all the games actually being developed are done in the dark which is why it seems none are developed.

Also many are very hypocritical (for instance, making naruto games to SELL / CASH COW players after MONTHS of basically shit talking people who weren't even making IP related games for finance). This behavior has gone on in this community for ages, but recently has reached a fever pitch.

If these two problems were addressed by holding this community to a better standard (aka accountability), then things would turn around overnight.

Instead, this toxic ness has essentially slowly driven this place into the ground.

Removing anime themed games from the website was a HUGE mistake as well as there are some websites who generate millions a month with working, totally legal systems that could EASILY be integrated into this website.

As Roblox's existence (and success) basically proves that it was a selfish move on behalf of the owners of this community, and not due to Cease and desists as they claim. In short, they removed anime games because they wanted to, not essentially because it was illegal.

If they wanted to keep their largest base of people here, all they would need to do is bring back BYOND dimes , lower that ridiculous 30% cut in rate to 5%, remove the ability to code credits into your game and build those DIRECTLY into the site so that anyone here can simply buy credits which are stored along with their key / account info.These credits can then be used in ANY game they desire and that absolves you (the owner )and all devs of legal issues when it comes to the games since you would then be making money selling digital currency untied to any single IP or entity.

Remove the restriction on anime themed games altogether, and that alone would make this community much more active. You will also see an immediate increase in revenue.

This also eliminates the need of these sorts of games to jump through hoops. You allow developers to cash out the credits they make from their games once every 2 weeks.

Which results in the dev and the site both making money, since you can decrease the cash out rate to say, 50%. (Meaning, if say a dev has 10,000 credits and each is worth 1 cent, they get 50$ when they cash out. More value to keep the credits on site or use them in other games.)


Roblox makes thousands (actually its millions if I'm not mistaken) per month in revenue and while their staple of game devs don't' focus on anime based titles, they make up a large piece of that revenue. This is 1000% proven, 1000% legal, and any argument you could mount against this is proven null and void a hundred times over with the existence of ROBLOX. In many ways BYOND is superior to that engine--so how are you failing right now with a 20+ year head start? Simple. Unwillingness to adapt / take good advice from people you dislike. (Shane, Me, etc).

In short, you need to make this community have value again. The people you fight so hard to keep around are often the ones driving customers away. There is no value to being a member, other than the 'sense of loyalty' one has and loyalty to what exactly? To be periodically harassed constantly despite being one of the best devs here? That's my experience anyway.


Draconian level control also doesn't help for example refusing to allow people to make EXEs and tying your product to a dying community.

In true fashion, it won't be addressed until this place has been run into the ground or close to it, but at least I can say I actually tried to save the community.

At the end of the day, anything said contrary to these points are just excuses, and if you want to do better, you have to stop making those.

Zagros5000 wrote:

Make a very good point, BYOND coulda been hella popular by now if it weren't for the cease n desist. Not sure how Roblox managed to get away with it but a large chunk of their success is probably from fan games (not just anime).

Roblox got away with it because the people making the fangame content were not monetizing that content.

Also the C&Ds basically haven't done anything to BYOND as a whole. The tide rose on the web. Better games became available more easily than what BYOND had to offer. Our tides didn't rise with the rest of the web. Mostly due to the fact that the majority of things made with BYOND were copy-paste of the same games over and over again, only slower, buggier, and with less gameplay overall somehow.

BYOND's collection of games really just slipped, never improving. 2000-2018, we have a vastly different gaming ecosystem on the web. It's really a no-brainer what happened.