ID:184026
 Jan 27 2007, 10:50 am
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The reason for BYOND members is so that BYOND can get more money so that BYOND 4 can be finished sooner. I've not seen any ads on the BYOND website anywhere, and if there were ads then BYOND could make money faster and therefore finish BYOND 4 faster. Comments?
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Atomixkid wrote:
The reason for BYOND members is so that BYOND can get more money so that BYOND 4 can be finished sooner. I've not seen any ads on the BYOND website anywhere, and if there were ads then BYOND could make money faster and therefore finish BYOND 4 faster. Comments? We're talking about experimenting with ads, but the last thing I want to do is turn this site into a clone of every other "business" on the net. What we might do is introduce a way for members to optionally put ads up and share revenue with us. BYOND Members is primarily around to support the maintenance costs of the site, but we're now growing fast enough where I've been able to bring on some staff to help push the project forward. This year will definitely be the most productive yet for BYOND, I can promise you that. We are currently in beta testing with BYOND 3.5++, which uses some of the BYOND 4.0 backend (and has features like larger maps and alpha channels). BYOND 4.0 will be in beta testing shortly. I fear it won't live up to the hype, but I do think it'll give developers a little more freedom in their interface construction. We'll do a BYOND Labs post on this once things are a bit more settled. | |
Unknown Person wrote:
As you can imagine, having Ads on the BYOND website would be very annoying, and still probably won't break even. Google ads are very nice and non-intrusive. | |
Tom wrote:
I fear it won't live up to the hype. That's what happens when things spend years in development time. | |
Tom wrote:
We are currently in beta testing with BYOND 3.5++, which uses some of the BYOND 4.0 backend (and has features like larger maps and alpha channels). BYOND 4.0 will be in beta testing shortly. I fear it won't live up to the hype, but I do think it'll give developers a little more freedom in their interface construction. Personally, I think 3.5++ is awesome in itself, and have been trying to convince Tom that it's worth more than the hype...:) | |
I agree, Google ads are nice and would definitely be the way to go if you were to pursue this option.
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Well, yes, but remember.
Everyone was all hyped about the /sound. But now look at it, it's only used in a few games, and doesn't really... it doesn't live up to it's hype. The "ds customization" would be very cool, but I think were going too far up, only to fall. I'm not saying BYOND 4 won't be great, I'm just saying, it might not be as much as everyones thinking. | |
Flame Sage wrote:
Well, yes, but remember. Some of the nice things about the new sound support are subtle (ability to mix music and more control over channels), and subtle stuff takes longer to get adopted. I have yet to experiment with the positional sound, but I think it'll be a benefit for a game like LRS, so you can tell from the sound where an event is happening on the board. | |
Flame Sage wrote:
Well, yes, but remember. The main reason for this is that we don't really have a vast resource of good sound people yet. I know I have to scrounge to find good sound effects, and too few people in the community are any good at making them. Music, too, is a shortcoming, because we have so few good musicians right now. Mark my words: Musicians are extremely important for improving the health of any gaming community. BYOND now supports the Mod formats, and there are still tons of talented Mod-format artists out there--who have not yet come here. Also, I think you're seeing a "bated breath" phenomenon here. A lot of people simply aren't trying to use newer features yet because they're waiting to see what comes after. Not to mention, we still have an awful lot of rippers and useless types who won't use the best features available because they will never be willing to learn how. Ironically you could probably make any game 200% better by tossing in 3D sound and environmental echoes, 500% if you throw in good music as well. Lummox JR | |
Lummox JR wrote:
...I think you're seeing a "bated breath" phenomenon here... but..but, i use mouthwash! :( | |
Actually, the feature I really think will help out 4.0 is the ability to change around the interface. Any game that uses a HUD would benefit from that.
I agree with Lummox. If more musicians were around then we would not only get better sounding games; but more people attracted to BYOND. As far as the ads go, I say it could be something to experiment with. Mayeb something not to large. Possibly, you could have it so that if you are a member you can choose to not to see the ads. By the way, does any of the staff think 4.0 will be out by june? | |
digitalmouse wrote:
Lummox JR wrote:I don't! :) Are we going to be able to insert custom textboxes into our games... and custom statpanels? Like, being able to have 2 statpanels showing at once? Ungh, it's kind of hard to explain... | |
Flame Sage wrote:
Are we going to be able to insert custom textboxes into our games... and custom statpanels? Like, being able to have 2 statpanels showing at once? Definite yes to the first one -- you'll be able to have more than one text output window and use a special proc to indicate which one you want output to go to (the standard << operator will send to the output window that is defined as the default). I'm not sure about multiple statpanels. It might not be feasible under the architecture: the BYOND system uses a client.statobj which defines which object you're looking at. The server pings the client, asking the client which statpanel is open, and then runs statobj.Stat() (this allows for optimisations like if(statpanel("panel"))). I suppose it would work if you wanted to have multiple open panels for a single object, provided the client could return a list of open panels instead of just a single open panel, but not if you wanted to look at statpanels for several objects. Most people use mob/Stat() as a procedurally-based proc anyway (as opposed to an object-oriented proc), so I suppose this isn't as bad as it seems. | |
I generally agree with this. Something like a small ad box at the bottom of high traffic pages (Such as the Forums and maybe Game Listing) seems perfectly reasonable, especially if it helps make BYOND more viable (Thus hopefully avoiding potentially difficult decisions about the features non-members can use).
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However, rumor is that BYOND 4.0 is around the corner*!
<font size=1>*The corner is a couple thousand miles long. But seriously, there has been a lot of development going on recently</font>