Byond has a lot of great resources and with the website change more of these are being featured however, there is no good comprehensive reference of ideas and techniques that at times have only been outlined in the forums.
I think Byond needs some sort of Wiki reference. The current reference is great for outlining the features of the language but it could be improved by making it more dynamic. Each function could have links to example libraries or related examples.
Of course there is the issue of who would manage it and be able to edit articles. This would be a problem but if access was limited to proven members of the community its creation should not be to much of an issue. (I do believe editing ability should be more open than not but, it is probably best that not everyone could edit).
Finally, I don't think it should be the same format as the old Byondbwicki. It was hard to navigate and hard to use it for anything meaningful because it had no structure.
ID:109913
 Feb 22 2011, 11:29 am
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Redundant
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Feb 22 2011, 11:59 am
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Falacy
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People were supposed to be able to post comments on reference entries, not sure what happened to that. Some of them do have comments...
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I have noticed that there are comments on some of the reference. However, the format could be updated a bit and more than anything else, I think this would be a good way to compile tips and tricks that people have listed in the forum and other places such as Jtgibson's snippets database.
Example: a function to find Gaussian random numbers. http://www.byond.com/developer/forum/?id=552860 It doesn't really deserve its own library or built in function but things like this would be helpful to have compiled in one place. Other example: The soft code for movement: http://www.byond.com/developer/forum/?query=Post+ID:242338 There are hundreds of things like these in the forums that once they leave the front page they are lost. | |
A wiki could have all types of content, not just the kind of stuff you'd find in the reference. It would be nice for people to have a source of information they can contribute to. Instead of always creating tutorials from scratch, people could use their time to improve the wiki.
Maybe this could be something that BYOND volunteers works on. | |
People make gameplay videos of BYOND games. I'm sure people would make videos about how to use BYOND. People just need to be given the idea that it would be worthwhile and the place for the videos to be displayed. I often think that the BYOND staff is too busy being over-burdened to realize how helpful the community can be.
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Forum_account wrote:
People make gameplay videos of BYOND games. I'm sure people would make videos about how to use BYOND. A gameplay video and a video tutorial are radically different projects. Even a tutorial of how to play a game would be incomparably easier than trying to teach somebody how to create one. Though, I have seen a few videos about how to icon with BYOND on youtube. | |
I mean a video about how to operate the software - explain what Dream Maker, Dream Daemon, and Dream Seeker are, how to use them, etc. A gameplay video doesn't have to show everything the game contains, a BYOND tutorial video wouldn't have to explain everything you can do with the software.
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Neblim wrote:
To clarify further, OOP, polymorphism, why you should write clean code, good programming practices, etc. I see no reason why those would need to be in a BYOND specific wiki page. You could just link directly to the source of the material. | |
Neblim wrote:
A formal link, obviously. If you go through the trouble of creating a functional, well designed wiki site for BYOND, I'm sure they would be willing to link to it. If it was good enough, it would probably become popular on its own, and not even need a link... | |
Neblim wrote:
I see some great DM articles on here like "Green Programming" and the like but none of the noobs care to find it. Good luck finding anything useful on this site, finding an entire website though... google | |
You can set it up if you'd like. I think that BYOND should have a wiki and the wiki should have an administrator, but I'm not volunteering myself =)
If nothing else, hopefully this can spur the staff into increasing the visibility of developer resources. People are using Dream Maker but they're not visiting the developer's section of the site, if only there was something that could be done about that... | |
I recommend to use http://www.wikia.com since it's "prevalent". I've never seen a wikispaces before, plus, I think wikia is free.
I tried using Firefox to start a wikia with it, and it failed. You'll probably have different results if you use Firefox. With Chrome, however, it worked. | |
Started the wikia one if someone wants to start : http://byond-dev.wikia.com/wiki/ BYOND%20development%20Wiki?wiki-welcome=1
I'll write something | |
Great idea, if you need any help with some content then let me know :D
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Neblim's looks a lot better, and ExPixel's is already being abused. Creating a ton of these is idiotic, we need one at most, and it should be more generic to BYOND, not specific to BYOND development.
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lol, lemme just remove that page...
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Maybe I should make one using wikispaces because it looks better and I can change the name right there. I'll try to keep an eye on it since I'm on my laptop a lot because of these papers I'm doing.
EDIT: ok how about this one, http://byond-wiki.wikispaces.com | |
The problem people have had with wiki pages in the past is the inability to login to them with their BYOND keys. Bwicki got a ton of usage because it was made with DMCGI, but was of course, butt-ugly.
I've tried my hand at modifying existing Wiki software to utilize BYOND keys, but never really devoted much effort to it and didn't get very far. It's entirely possible though, I'm just lazy and more interested in other projects. | |
