Oh that's not BYOND, it's you.

I know it's just me, and not BYOND. That's what makes it weird. It seems a lot of people suffer from weird, odd little quirks like this, and it's never one specific thing, but just random incompatibilities or conflicts. You know. Quirks.

BYOND is quirky. That's what I'm saying.

JRG wrote:

Like, the latest version, no settings related to skins are ever saved. Nothing. If I replace a skin with my own custom skin, the custom skin is over-written. Not entirely new, but now, every time I close the Dream Seeker window, all of the settings are erased. Including all the macros. For some reason, my macros don't save?

And I feel quite confident that if I dared to report this as a bug then I would just get something silly like, "Oh that's not BYOND /excuse."

On what do you base this certainty? There are certain technical limitations imposed by Windows, but there are some we can work around.

It sounds like this is probably a case of file permissions not being right, but if we understood the system layout that's causing the issue, we might be able to come up with a good way to avoid these sorts of problems. In the absence of information though, we can do nothing. This is the first I've heard of macros not saving at all.

A few weeks ago, I was on Vista, and I sufferred from serious Output problems that were stated to me as not having enough RAM because Vista is a hog. So, just to test it for myself, I switched to XP. Here I am on XP. And to be honest, the Output problems were fixed. But other problems showed up.

Depending on the game it is still possible to run into some RAM issues, particularly if you had them before and you're on the same computer. Those kinds of things are tricky to deal with. It sounds like you're blaming the wrong thing for your problems though; your computer may just be badly out of date. Also I need hardly point out that the Wacom tablet is not standard hardware, and while it hasn't given me any issues it's possible you're running into some problems with it that are more unique to your system (or conversely, that my lack of trouble is unique to mine).

And, what bugs me the most, is that as the updates are pushed forward, it is made incompatible entirely with past versions. It has come to the point that I have quit playing games entirely simply because I dreaded the update so much.

"Incompatible entirely" is factually inaccurate; there are various forms of compatibility and some have not changed much over time. In particular it has always been a major goal to continue to support old games. However it is reasonable to point out that several recent server features have required client upgrades to join those games. Most of those recent changes were security-related. For example, in version 468 we added a form of encryption for .rsc files by popular request; this necessarily meant that clients needed to upgrade to read the new files.

So, please. Can someone assure me that the development of BYOND is NOT silly and that there are unseen fixes that make up whenever it seems BYOND is made worse?

There are not merely unseen fixes, but seen and documented fixes. Each release has included notes explaining what changed. Just because a particular fix may not have impacted you does not mean it did not exist. Interface-wise however the frontend has been improving quite a lot in stability and has had no significant changes for quite a while, so if you're experiencing problems along those lines that would be unlikely to be caused by the newer releases. (That's not to say a new release can't cause new bugs to appear; it happens. But usually if a bug appears only as of a certain release it's because some related code was touched.)

However you're making half-allusions to problems you seem loath to describe, so I can only guess as to what issues you've encountered besides the Wacom driver issue you had a while back, and this macro issue for which you have offered no details to investigate. You have no other bug reports on file. We can't fix bugs that haven't been reported.

Lummox JR

Lummox JR wrote:

JRG wrote:

Like, the latest version, no settings related to skins are ever saved. Nothing. If I replace a skin with my own custom skin, the custom skin is over-written. Not entirely new, but now, every time I close the Dream Seeker window, all of the settings are erased. Including all the macros. For some reason, my macros don't save?

And I feel quite confident that if I dared to report this as a bug then I would just get something silly like, "Oh that's not BYOND /excuse."

On what do you base this certainty? There are certain technical limitations imposed by Windows, but there are some we can work around.

I should elaborate on what I meant by this: I am referring to odd little quirks that my friends and I suffer from every time we update to a newer BYOND, that are ultimately unconnected and seemingly random. The two times they have bothered me enough for me to bring them to attention - once in Bug Reports and once in this subforum, I was assured that BYOND is not at fault.

Now that I've seen them more often, I've come to understand that while BYOND is not at fault, neither is anything else, and it's just a weird quirk that, apparently, can not be worked around. Most of the time, said quirk disappears in newer versions, such as Dream Seeker dropping my connection to the host server randomly, usually within ten minutes of connection. (I maintain this is not related to the host server because older versions of BYOND did not have this problem, and as BYOND updated, the host server did not change, so it must either have been a quirk or BYOND's fault.)

It sounds like this is probably a case of file permissions not being right, but if we understood the system layout that's causing the issue, we might be able to come up with a good way to avoid these sorts of problems. In the absence of information though, we can do nothing. This is the first I've heard of macros not saving at all.

I feel this is just a quirk between my system and BYOND. It is very possible that, since I am on a new OS, that BYOND is just not getting the right permissions, but I do not use BYOND for enough games or often enough for this to bother me. Since no one else has had this problem (I've asked around), I figured it was just a silly little thing causing a rather large problem.

Depending on the game it is still possible to run into some RAM issues, particularly if you had them before and you're on the same computer. Those kinds of things are tricky to deal with. It sounds like you're blaming the wrong thing for your problems though; your computer may just be badly out of date. Also I need hardly point out that the Wacom tablet is not standard hardware, and while it hasn't given me any issues it's possible you're running into some problems with it that are more unique to your system (or conversely, that my lack of trouble is unique to mine).

I understand this. At first it frustrated me, but the need to click the output was not very common in the first place and could usually be worked around. My computer is getting rather old and was not exactly the best in the first place. BYOND was the only program that would give me an issue related to the Wacom tablet, which was why I was quick to assume that it was BYOND's fault - now, I understand a bit more. I am on XP now, though, and have yet to install the tablet software, but when I do, I suppose that will tell me if it was Vista or my computer just suxxorzorz. Either way, I've more or less shrugged it away. Just a minor nuisance, nothing big.

"Incompatible entirely" is factually inaccurate; there are various forms of compatibility and some have not changed much over time. In particular it has always been a major goal to continue to support old games. However it is reasonable to point out that several recent server features have required client upgrades to join those games. Most of those recent changes were security-related. For example, in version 468 we added a form of encryption for .rsc files by popular request; this necessarily meant that clients needed to upgrade to read the new files.

I think I will apologize here; I am beginning to notice that I used a lot of vocabulary that could have definitely been cleaned up. Thanks for the information on this. "Incompatible entirely" was very much a wrong word to use, but generally as BYOND progresses, many servers update to newer BYONDs and eventually the clients follow.

There are not merely unseen fixes, but seen and documented fixes. Each release has included notes explaining what changed. Just because a particular fix may not have impacted you does not mean it did not exist. Interface-wise however the frontend has been improving quite a lot in stability and has had no significant changes for quite a while, so if you're experiencing problems along those lines that would be unlikely to be caused by the newer releases. (That's not to say a new release can't cause new bugs to appear; it happens. But usually if a bug appears only as of a certain release it's because some related code was touched.)

I try to affirm that these are largely quirks that occur whenever I update. However, as I mentioned earlier in my post, this is from the standpoint of someone who does not use BYOND for development of anything, so while I will acknowledge that there are many changes per release, I concentrate particularly on what does affect me, and I've encountered plenty more frustrations and silly quirks with BYOND than I have features that I liked, whether it was immediately a cool feature or something that took time for me to adjust to. (Separate pager, for example, I disliked at first.)

However you're making half-allusions to problems you seem loath to describe, so I can only guess as to what issues you've encountered besides the Wacom driver issue you had a while back, and this macro issue for which you have offered no details to investigate. You have no other bug reports on file. We can't fix bugs that haven't been reported.

Like I said, I'm trying not to say there's a lot of bugs with BYOND. It's just.. quirky. I encounter seemingly random errors as if it were Windows, and I can only imagine that this is because it conflicts with certain little things that perhaps not every PC would have on there, such as my Wacom issue.

BYOND has really made a lot of amazing progress, and once I sit on a new version for a while I do not mind any problems it may give me - especially since it is amazingly more stable than at the beginning of 4.0. (Oh, the memories.) It is also quirky, and I just wanted to see if anyone else felt that way about the program.

JRG wrote:

I just felt that this, being a BYOND Discussion forum, that it would be nice to discuss that I feel BYOND is silly and quirky. It's not bad, it's pretty awesome. It's also quirky.

Honestly I see nothing positive coming out of such a discussion. What is there to even discuss? If any quirks are unique to your system, other people are going to have entirely different quirks. And that's true of all software. And "silly" doesn't fit the toned-down approach you're taking now.

Lummox JR

Vista in general is a crapstain. Upgrade to XP, even. I do not know the person's specs on his PC, but if 7 is too much, go with XP.

Nintendo products are from the stone age *coughWEPkeycough*. I've never heard of a Wi-Fi thingy being incompatible with an OS.

You could have spent that $40 on a wireless router and saved yourself a lot of hassle. Also, the device in question has Vista drivers, if the drivers work on Vista they'll work in Windows 7.

I've wondered for some time now why BYOND isn't open source. Seems like it'd get a lot farther, faster. I suppose it's somebody's baby, so there's that, I have a hard time believing they make a lot of money off of it though.