Some of the upcoming changes to the BYOND site aim to hide rips and highlight the original games. The first step towards getting rid of rips is to admit that we have a problem. Most people identify the wrong problem. The presence of rips isn't the problem, it's just a symptom. The problem is that rips exist because for many DM developers its the only way they can create a game.
Rippers are people that are eager to make games but don't have the DM knowledge or patience to make a game from scratch. Making a rip is the easiest way for them to create a game. To cut down on the number of rips we'll have to provide alternative ways to develop games that might be a little harder than making rips but aren't as hard as making games from scratch.
You can also see this problem in DM's introductory developer resources. These resources are directed at the ideal DM newbie. The ideal DM newbie has no pre-existing notions about programming and is eager to learn, certainly willing to spend a day reading the 200 page DM guide before starting on a game.
The problem is that ideal DM newbies don't exist. The average actual DM newbie has some experience with DM from making rips. Beginner tutorials should not try to teach the programming basics with the hope that the reader will see what the basics can lead to - that crap is for ideal newbies, not actual newbies. In the time it takes to read your description of "what's a var?" they could have made a rip, hosted it, and had 6 people playing.
A beginner tutorial should be attached to a significant library or demo. Make a framework for creating RTS games then write a tutorial that shows someone with very little DM knowledge how to make an RTS with your framework. Your framework handles the annoying parts of making an RTS and lets the newbie play with the cooler parts - designing units, creating new attacks, new maps, etc.
Using your framework to make an RTS might be harder than making a rip but it's not much harder. People can start developing games and ease into programming at their own pace. Every step of the way they have a game that they can call their own. Unlike making a rip they can design the game however they want, they're not limited by aspects of the original game.
BYOND's selling point always seemed to be ease of use but it isn't that easy to use. It just has built-in networking. Making a game is hard it's just making it multiplayer that's easy. BYOND isn't likely to ever rival XNA or Flash in terms of technical power so it should more fully embrace its niche of being the easy-to-use game development suite.
So what if a team of four indie developers can use XNA to create a popular game that's on par with commercial PC/console games? I think it's a better selling point to say that BYOND lets 10 year old kids express their creativity by creating computer games. With the increase in high school and college level game development classes, providing a platform for younger audiences to develop games is an excellent service. I'm not sure the BYOND staff is aware of this, but I think it would serve them well to focus a little less on the software itself and a little more on how people can use it.
ID:106319
 Dec 28 2010, 4:31 am
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Yeah I used to make rips because they provided an easy base to start with. I could just add the content I wanted without having to program all the other crap. The way I thought was "Why program my own Dragonball system, when I can copy and paste and get almost the same thing?". And what's funny is that some people actually prefer rips towards a whole new game cause it's kind of like a mod.
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EmpirezTeam wrote:
We have a lot of rips not because people want to create games, but because people want to own games. I agree that's part of it but rips often advertise what they've added to the game. Part of owning your own game is that the game is yours. Rippers do want to create a game and some want that just for the sake of owning it. An alternative to ripping would help some of them, at least. | |
It sounds like you just want people to basically make an open source framework for each game genre which would end up acting like your pixel movement library.
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EmpirezTeam wrote:
We have a lot of rips not because people want to create games, but because people want to own games. Someone explained this to me a while back ( I think it was Schnit ). Yes. | |
SuperAntx wrote:
It sounds like you just want people to basically make an open source framework for each game genre which would end up acting like your pixel movement library. Sort of. These frameworks would be made specifically as learning tools to be used with accompanying tutorials. I imagine these frameworks as being less open-ended but more complete. My sidescroller library is heading in this direction but currently it's just a movement system - you can use it for any type of action/platform game. The RPG framework would have to make decisions (like picking turn-based or realtime combat) so the result would be less open-ended (you couldn't use it to make any RPG) but it would be more complete (so less work is needed to create your own RPG). | |
I think we should discuss exactly what such frameworks would be composed of. We are competing with people who can instantly create the game they want by downloading a source code. How do we make learning our frameworks more appealing than ripping, to these kind of people? One should keep in mind a lot of rippers are not interested in learning game development -- they just want to run a game from the get-go.
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I think Mikau was talking about holding a contest to write frameworks.
Unrelated, but I wrote my own poopy poopy RTS framework/demo thing, and it hasn't gotten much love. I suppose the hub itself isn't really easy to find unless you know what you're looking for. I'm sure I'm not the only one who made something like this only to have it lost in the abyss, though. | |
DivineTraveller wrote:
I think Mikau was talking about holding a contest to write frameworks. I used a few things from that to help create Empirez. :D | |
Toadfish wrote:
I think we should discuss exactly what such frameworks would be composed of. We are competing with people who can instantly create the game they want by downloading a source code. How do we make learning our frameworks more appealing than ripping, to these kind of people? One should keep in mind a lot of rippers are not interested in learning game development -- they just want to run a game from the get-go. For the people who want a game so they can be a GM there's not much we can do. For the people who want to make a game but don't have the patience to become a DM expert first, I think there's a lot we can do. I've never made a rip but here are what I imagine to be the appealing aspects of it: * The annoying work is already done for you. * The project runs so you can run it at any time to see how things work. * You can make minor changes - if you just want to change how much damage an ability does you just change one number. A framework can just as easily provide these benefits to a developer. The framework would also: * Let you make major changes. You don't have to keep some aspect of the game in place because it was coded poorly and is tough to change. * Let you make different types of games. By only ripping you can't make an RTS until you get the source to one. * Let you make games with any theme. You could turn the RTS framework into a Starcraft type of game or an Age of Empires type of game. * Let you make games that you can honestly call your own. * Provide an example of a complete game that uses the framework. * Provide tutorials and demos about adding more advanced features. I wouldn't expect this to make all rips instantly vanish but I do think we can make an attractive alternative to ripping. The biggest advantage is that the frameworks can be created for any genre. Instead of only being able to easily rip an RPG people could easily create whatever type of game they want. Another advantage is that people would then create tutorials and demos about how to use these frameworks. The biggest problem is that this would be a community effort and would greatly benefit from help from the BYOND staff but both of those things are hard to get. | |
Beyond just the framework, I think the best way this idea would work is by having not just some tutorials explaining how it works, but an extensive library of resources and demos (for different kinds of games and showing off how the features may be used) for each framework.
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@Toadfish:
I agree. The framework becomes another layer of abstraction. Instead of someone asking "how do I make this in DM?" they'd ask "how do I make this in the board game framework?". Instead of having people make RPG combat demos that can't be integrated with most RPGs they can create one that easily integrates with the RPG framework. Unfortunately we'd need a lot of help from the developer community to establish these frameworks, tutorials, and demos. | |
I agree.
BYOND needs more quality libraries! They need to be actual libraries, not meant for showing off codr skillz. Libraries that cover many aspects of BYOND game development, and not only showing off the different types of shiny pixel-based movement possible. I think an ideal situation would be for a newbie to, after having read enough of the DM guide, be able to pull the necessary libraries together and voila, there's the framework. Libraries, after all, are meant to be for the most part plug and play, while still letting the programmer customize a lot of it. And of course they'd need useful documentation. Since not everyone is that smart, some developers might choose to build the mentioned frameworks themselves. And by build, I mean search for(and/or make) and combine libraries. If the libraries are too hard to combine, the newbie might need some help modifying the library's source, but that is why we have a community. So you want a board game. You're going to be posting on the forum "Halp me want maek bord gaym" and you'll soon be referred to a board game framework. Maybe the game you want to build doesn't have a framework attached. Maybe you want to build the closest thing to Minecraft on BYOND because you've been playing it too much. Since BYOND can't do 3D, you might want pixel-based movement in an isometric perspective, because one exists. Now all you need is the crafting/building part, monster drops, fairly basic monster AI, and a random world generator. Sounds like a lot of work, though I wonder how much of these are already covered in demos or libraries(though the interface for Minecraft's crafting isn't really on BYOND yet, except in the videos of Craftfolk shown by Oasiscircle). There are definitely articles on them, that can be made into libraries. | |
While we're on it, I feel there are libraries for almost anything but it's WAY too difficult to find.
The library should be sorted out and organized instead of just a giant list of 125+ Libraries. I remember there being a lot more but I can't search for specific ones I need. Now if they were organized into sections, such as AI, Interface Libraries, Ect ect. | |
Zack101 wrote:
While we're on it, I feel there are libraries for almost anything but it's WAY too difficult to find. The next site update will include a tagging system for libraries. Kaiochao wrote: So you want a board game. You're going to be posting on the forum "Halp me want maek bord gaym" and you'll soon be referred to a board game framework. This is related to what Zack101 said - having these big, somewhat official frameworks makes it easier to ask and answer questions. People make demos and libraries but they're rarely used, the work ends up being a waste. When a newbie asks "how do I make a board game?" you can say "with this board game framework." When a newbie asks "how do I add this feature to my board game?" you can explain how to add it to the board game framework (or link to a demo that already does that) instead of having to understand their project so you can develop an answer for their particular situation. | |
I'm not 10 :( In any case, I agree it's a substantial starting ground - this is where I started, and it's due to BYOND that I plan to pursue my degree in Computer Science - though I'm not sure if I'm going to focus in on game design yet or not.
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I really do see the pixel_movement engine as a base.
I would love to contribute and distribute libraries and engines, as I've always wanted to start producing engines of my own for specific things, but I'm scared my coding isn't efficient enough for people to base it off of. | |
Zack101 wrote:
I really do see the pixel_movement engine as a base. It's as much of a base as the tile-based movement system BYOND gives you is a base. From it you can build almost anything. These frameworks I have in mind would be more specific. They might use the pixel movement engine but they'd be tailored for making specific types of games. I would love to contribute and distribute libraries and engines, as I've always wanted to start producing engines of my own for specific things, but I'm scared my coding isn't efficient enough for people to base it off of. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but there'd be more to it than just the frameworks. The frameworks provide basic functionality. Other developers could create demos and tutorials showing how to use the framework and how to add features to it. There would be plenty of ways to help aside from the development of the engine. | |
I Read the Whole DM guide in 3 days while making a game along the way. It was torture but I was determined. :P
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On BYOND, we have a lot of people who want to "OYOND" ( Own Your Own Net Dream ) rather than have to go through the trouble of actually building one. And how do they do it? Find an existing source, change the name of the game, and start hosting it. Voila, they own their own game.