If BYOND has such a bad reputation, don't use it. Use Java. Use Flash. Use Unity. I don't really care. Just stop crying about it.
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SilkWizard wrote:
Anyone who uses the "BYOND has a reputation" excuse is pathetic.What excuse are you using for NEStalgia's failure? Your advertising campaign probably reached hundreds of thousands of gamers, and yet the game only has a few hundred players. Even the tens of thousands you claim to have brought in don't seem to be around... Tom wrote: I don't really care.You must, or you wouldn't have randomly posted a defensive comment about it =P I would tell you to take such criticism constructively, but since you're already working on the Flash client, I would assume it has already been constructively absorbed and acted upon. Regardless, suggesting Unity is still the best advice to anyone looking for a new development platform. I didn't even know BYOND had a reputation outside of itself, I wonder how that works into everything... EDITS: Forum_Account wrote: My point was that there are no technical restrictions that prevent BYOND from being taken seriously. [...] BYOND's technical limitations (2d graphics, laggy, etc.) are often used as an excuse. Flash game developers didn't use technical limitations as an excuse, and BYOND game developers shouldn't either.First off, Flash developers use its technical limitations as an excuse just as often. How many multiplayer Flash games have you seen? Practically none, because its not built into the engine. On top of that, comparing Flash's Technical limitations to BYOND's, is like comparing a bicycle to a motorcycle. Sure, they're vaguely similar, but one is obviously more powerful. However, at the same time, they offer various differences/advantages over each other. If people can devise fun games that are played on napkins, people can make fun BYOND games.Is there some napkin based game making millions of dollars with a global fan-base that I'm not aware of? A fan game can have an original premise and be a fresh gaming experience, but its less likely. Fan game developers are doing something that is intentionally not innovative, at least in part. While its possible the developer could make innovative gameplay, its not as likely.That's not true, unless its a fan-game of a game. Most of the anime games on BYOND, for example, offer original concepts not only to BYOND, but to gaming as a whole. While "original" games like NEStalgia, Feval, and Decadence just use concepts that have been outdated for decades. Even REO, which is a fan-game of a game, offers pretty unique gameplay concepts. The Magic Man wrote: It's a PVP game. Player vs Player. It's not advertised as single player and specifically states it is multiplayer only.It absolutely does, and would almost guarantee you more players and publicity/popularity. There is no excuse for a game to be single-player or multiplayer only. If its a quick fix to add, then I would definitely recommend it. | |
SilkWizard wrote:
LordAndrew wrote: ...I feel kind of stupid for not thinking about it just being people who are bitter about BYOND trolling. Derp. Falacy wrote: Tom wrote: I dunno, all Tom probably ever hears is how something about the BYOND site or Dream Maker is broken or terrible and needs to be fixed, which is pretty discouraging when you're constantly bombarded with negativity. | |
LordAndrew wrote:
...I feel kind of stupid for not thinking about it just being people who are bitter about BYOND trolling. Derp.I seriously doubt that's the case. That either means the majority(?) of these random and/or reputable gaming websites' user-bases are made up of angry ex-BYONDers, or that current BYONDers are going out of their way to make accounts there, just to troll on the NEStalgia entries? I dunno, all Tom probably ever hears is how something about the BYOND site or Dream Maker is broken or terrible and needs to be fixed, which is pretty discouraging when you're constantly bombarded with negativity.Maybe if he did something right every once in a while! Just kidding =P. But he does seem to be lacking when it comes to taking criticism constructively. I get non-stop negative feedback, and intentionally go out of my way to determine the true source of the complaint, and then attempt to fix it. To get anything done for BYOND, you basically have to incite a riot. Also, I edited my previous post, in response to older comments that I hadn't read. If anyone wants to go back and read the new stuff =P | |
The point is this: BYOND has tons of limitations. It may have a bad reputation among the 0.000001% of the Internet that has heard of it. There are some things that will never change. We get it. Now stop crying about it.
Even if SilkWizard is only retaining 1% of the users he's brought in through his minimal advertisement (and I suspect it's much greater), that 1% has proved something very important: mainstream users will play BYOND games and mainstream users will pay for BYOND games. And we're not talking pocket change here. Once his game hits Flash portals like Kongregate I expect that it will explode, because there's a market there. Interacting with Silk, I get the impression he doesn't even care about the money as much as the notoriety, and I can see others striving for the same thing. We are at an interesting point in history where anyone can get their 15 minutes of fame just by posting the right thing at the right time. And BYOND can be that medium just as much as any of these other tools. Make a good game, BYOND or not, advertise it right, and people will play it. You might even make some money off it. Or don't. Just stop blaming everyone but yourself if it doesn't work. | |
Tom wrote:
The point is this: BYOND has tons of limitations.I don't think "limitations" is the right word for it. Maybe setbacks? It may have a bad reputation among the 0.000001% of the Internet that has heard of it.If we're only counting people who have heard about BYOND, then that's probably not the right percentage =P minimal advertisementMinimal? What more is he going to do? Get TV commercials and start selling boxed versions at Walmart? that 1% has proved something very important: mainstream users will play BYOND games and mainstream users will pay for BYOND games.That's not 1% of mainstream gamers, that 1% of the ones interested enough to try it out in the first place. Which is a ridiculously low amount. Considering if you showed a decent looking free game to 99% of gamers, they would at least try it out. And BYOND can be that medium just as much as any of these other tools.If the right game is made, maybe, but for too many reasons, NEStalgia isn't it. | |
Falacy just drop it, don't get Tom involved in you and silks bullcrap bitch fight. Now your just nitpicking at words its not gonna solve anything. All Tom is doing is being a good admin(or whatever the word is) and advertising his site. Sure i don't like nestalgia(not my style and i dislike turn based battle) but if people do then who are we too judge them its the style the game goes for, and sadly it's one of the few games on byond that actaully has content, that you would expect from an actaul game. At the moment byond has games all over the place with no order some excelling in some departments but severly lacking in other departments(more like mini-games or demo's) which is required too appease actaul gamers who are looking for something more complete and innovative. Eventually im sure byond will start producing quite a few decent things which are complete to a games standards, if you have something that can be advertised is refined and polished to the expectations of an actaul game and hopefully is innovative and good, please bring it to the table, otherwise stop shooting Tom because he is working with what he has for the better of the website- and take you and silk's scuffle elsewhere.
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Falacy, you can be negative about BYOND and negative about Silk/NEStagia all you want. I am looking at the facts (which I have since his traffic and subscriptions go through us). What they show me is that his game has brought in many new users and quite a bit of money (an amount that frankly I'm pretty jealous of!) Whether this dies down or not, it has almost certainly been worth the time investment it took him and his team to create this game, and I imagine it has been exciting for him to receive some attention, independent of the money. His "advertisement" consisted of making a website, a video, and sending out an email. These are things anyone can do. Non-minimal advertisement would actually be spending money to promote the game.
I only bring up NEStalgia as an example. I certainly hope it is not the only original game on BYOND that receives this sort of success. That would mean we either don't have any other good developers or they aren't trying. I see a lot of good developers. So I'd like to see them trying, as Silk has, to advertise their games outside of our tiny little enclave. That's really the only way games, and BYOND itself, will become successful. | |
I have to really stop posting my message at the start while still editing it, becoming a bad habit >_>.
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Jlxati wrote:
I have to really stop posting my message at the start while still editing it, becoming a bad habit >_>. I do this all the time, and then I compulsively edit it! Actually, I'll often edit a post several hours after I wrote it after finding some imperfection to obsess about. | |
Tom wrote:
Sagely words. I agree with what this guy said. I would love for you to post this particular point of view of yours much more often, Tom. You'd be surprised at your capability to make a change of attitudes among developers here, if you would just be a little more candid with your opinions. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
BYOND has a bad reputation. Claiming it doesn't because people who didn't even know BYOND existed played a game isn't proof that it doesn't have a bad reputation, especially when among those same people there is plenty who do know what BYOND is, and have been effected by it's bad reputation. Not to beat a dead horse, but saying that BYOND has a bad reputation means that most people believe it to have a bad reputation. Yes, some people think poorly of BYOND (though, its often the community they think poorly of) but given any game, program, song, book, movie, person, or tv show, you can find someone who hates it - that doesn't mean that all books have bad reputations. My initial point here is that there is nothing about BYOND that prevents people from using it to make fun games that can be appreciated amd accepted by the general internet population. NEStalgia is the example that proves this and claiming that you don't like the game doesn't disprove it. Like I said in the previous paragraph, for any game you can find someone who hates it. If anything, having haters is more of a testament to its quality than to its lack of quality - if a game was truly bad people wouldn't waste their time forming or expressing their opinion of it. Tom wrote: Make a good game, BYOND or not, advertise it right, and people will play it. You might even make some money off it. Or don't. Just stop blaming everyone but yourself if it doesn't work. Please make this the message of the day. | |
Tom wrote:
Once his game hits Flash portals like Kongregate I expect that it will explode, because there's a market there. My hopes for the flash client aren't nearly as high. The games played with the flash client must be multiplayer and this creates a few problems. If you make a chess game you need a dedicated host so that people can play, you also need AI and you need to support multiple game instances per server.Depending on the game, being multiplayer can create quite a barrier for entry. I don't want to join a tower defense game only to have 4 people calling me a noob for building the wrong kind of tower. I think there's a reason why most casual games are single player, its not an accident or because of laziness. (edit: forgot to mention that the interface will lag because all commands are handled by the server. What BYOND server can handle the kind of traffic a big gaming site can throw at it? I think that downloadable games that facilitate multiplayer game creation (i.e. the game helps to find people to play with, games to join, etc.) will always be a better approach for BYOND games) As BYOND gets more good games it'll become a larger and larger blip on the radar of indie gaming blogs. People are willing to download games, many of the top games on jayisgames.com are downloaded (knytt, braid, etc. http://jayisgames.com/tag/download/rating). I think there's a Game Maker game on there - Spelunky, and its rating is tied with Torchlight and 0.01 less than Braid (both are incredible games). There's already the potential for a game to be hugely popular without the flash client. If people think they have to support the flash client to have a successful game, every glitch in the flash client is a potential excuse for the game's failure. | |
You're doing a great job with BYOND Tom. Reason why I haven't released many games is because of the fact that while I do come up with ideas or have worked on some, most of them never get finished or never see the light of day. Plus, I sometimes do get lazy while sometimes I do other things.
Now admittedly as you already know, I have made a few fangames myself. However, none of the released ones were anime-related (though I was working on one or two of my own at one time). Creating original games with gameplay is still on my list of goals to achieve. Been thinking of creating another new game as well as finish upgrading my "SByIo Library" in the near future. If I ever create and release another game, I'll make sure it is of high quality. | |
Thank you Bandock. I hope you keep at it and release a game. It doesn't have to be high-quality out of the box... sometimes it's better to get things out there to get an audience before worrying about the polish.
Forum_account-- I agree that that multiplayer games are much more difficult to maintain, but this is also the reason that there is an opportunity here. The thing about these Flash portals is that they have an instant audience, so the problem goes from finding users to making sure that your game can handle your users. The latter may be a harder problem, but it is an enviable one. We have lots of games here that struggle to even get a handful of players. That won't be an issue on a portal. Furthermore, there's no reason that a BYOND game can't have the same "infinite" audience as Flash as long as the servers are available. Sure, each game may only be able to handle ~100 players, but if you were to make the server distributable, you could have 100s of servers. It is more overhead than a Flash game since the servers have to run somewhere, but it's not insurmountable. That said, I completely agree not to use the current lack of a web client as a crutch. Great games can be made right now in BYOND, and these games can both attract players (who have to deal with the whopping 3MB install) and even make money. That is a very cool thing. | |
BYOND has its limitations and set backs just like any other platform you'll develop on. Perfect example between people who develop on the Xbox 360 and PS3 have limitation problems with each system. The Xbox 360 is easy to develop for but has a limited disc space compared to the PS3. However, the PS3 is difficult to work on due to it's cell processors and so on.
In terms of programming, Dream Maker is a bit slow when comparing it to C++ or Java and this does have to put some design limitations on certain things like pixel based movement/CPU intensive events. The programming language itself is easy and simple to understand and it's got quite a bit built in for you already, the interface editor is nice(the icon editor needs a zoom function though!). The fact that BYOND does lack a flash/web client is indeed a crutch as Tom said, and advertising can be a pain with having the BYOND name tagged on to it, but the "bad reputation" it is isn't exactly with the engine itself(or if it is, the people haven't seen it in 5 years or more because the engine itself has significantly improved over the last ten years), but rather the inefficient programming practices of those larger games are to blame. To go a little off topic @Forum_account. I was looking at your pixel movement library and it looks pretty good. Do you think it would be possible to convert this for launching projectiles? I'm currently using a pixel movement system and while it's good, the lag does start to build up when many projectiles are launched at the same time(My test servers usually consist of about 50 people, each of them having about 90 techniques). A perfect example is when this is used a few times, it really does bog the game down.(It's a combination of the missile proc and the pixel movement) http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HSXvBBOw11s&feature=channel_video_title | |
People bash Java all of the time, yet Minecraft has made millions.
All that matters is the quality of the game, and BYOND can absolutely deliver some great quality games. End of story. | |
SilkWizard wrote:
People bash Java all of the time, yet Minecraft has made millions. Yeah that's pretty right, everyone complains that Java is difficult to program on, but for some reason I seem to get it more than C++(I don't like pointers). Quality is difficult to accomplish when you lack the means and resources to do so. (In my case it's pixel art) | |
Axerob wrote:
Quality is difficult to accomplish when you lack the means and resources to do so. (In my case it's pixel art) I made a couple thousand dollars back in the day off of the original Proelium, and I drew all of those graphics when I had no idea what I was doing with pixel art (and it shows). So long as you have a consistent look, your game will be just fine. Sometimes all that you need is raw determination. The only resource that you could possibly be lacking is time - the time required to do the coding and the pixel art on your own, or the time it takes to develop good relationships with people who can help you for free (or for the promise of compensation if the game is successful). To put it in perspective for you, NEStalgia was created on a budget of $0. All that it took was a lot of time, effort, and the belief that we could succeed. | |
The Magic Man is Autistic. Plus, a handful of people who happened to know what BYOND was (bitter former BYOND users) bitching about it in a couple comment threads made absolutely no difference in terms of the tens of thousands of people who signed up for new BYOND keys and joined NEStalgia.
Anyone who uses the "BYOND has a reputation" excuse is pathetic.