ACWraith wrote:

@NefariousDevelopment: It's not a secret. The difficulty of dealing with the community has been expressed in the official NEStalgia podcast.

Professional.

@AlexandraErin: The point wasn't to brag about being more productive than the BYOND staff, the point was to ask: why is BYOND's own development so slow and mysterioud in comparison when it has multiple contributors working regular hours?

SilkWizard wrote:

Communicating to a bunch of retards that you're working on improving things isn't a particular fulfilling or useful way to spend your time, especially when you're busy.
In my personal experience, interacting with even the NEStalgia community on any type of regular basis makes me want to kill myself... and they're the one of the most mature groups of online users I've ever encountered.

The communication doesn't have to be interactive - it could just be Tom or Lummox JR writing short updates about what they've been working on. This post, which just contained a few images, generated a lot of positive responses and got people excited to make games. Posts from the BYOND staff could have very good effects.

I think that the sooner everyone stops pretending that there are lots of great developers in the BYOND community, the better. Who is Tom going to make big announcements to at this point: the groups of kids on "teams" arguing over who stole who's source code, the pissed off anime kiddie saying not to play x game because the mods are mean, or the bored outsiders who drop in once a year to complain that things haven't changed?

BYOND isn't full of great developers, but it's not *full* of kids making rips either. There are a lot of people who are a few steps above the kids making rips, but they have nothing pushing them to go further and do better - they think it's sufficient to just not be making rips. There are very *very* few developers whose creations reach their potential. Finding ways to get people to better reach their potential is an easy way to improve BYOND because we'd just be getting people to do things they're already capable of.

Probably because those "multiple contributors" are really ONE contributor, one that puts a lot of effort into the project for very little in return. Tom is busy doing things to keep himself from going under, and Lummox is working as much as he can and barely getting paid to do it.

As for the "other BYOND Staff", there isn't any.

@Tom: It already gives me a better opinion of BYOND to know how much time is devoted to it. It might not seem like there should be, but there's a huge difference in saying "guys, I'm going on vacation for 5 weeks so I won't be posting comments on the feature tracker" and simply not posting any comments on the feature tracker for 5 weeks.

Nadrew wrote:

Probably because those "multiple contributors" are really ONE contributor, one that puts a lot of effort into the project for very little in return.

The problem isn't that the BYOND staff isn't doing any work - I figured they must have been doing something. The problem is that there's no way to tell. There are tons of BYOND users who use their blogs more effectively than the BYOND staff, and they all have much smaller audiences.

Would you rather they spent time blogging or spent their time working?

Forum_account wrote:

I wasn't sure what to think of it initially, but it sounds like blog posts will just be posts on your own personal forum. Does this also mean that these "blog posts" get threaded comments instead of the current, sequential list of comments?

"Blog" posts will just go in the main forums in a category of your choosing (so instead of having to check the old front page and the Community forum for community posts, you just check the Community forum). I say "blog" because in this context there really is no blog-- your posts are just part of a forum. Now there is a place for decentralized discussion, and that is around hub entries. So every hub entry (library or game) has its own forum and those, too, get somewhat crossposted to the main forums so that they can get more traffic.

The point is this-- the traffic to these blogs is purely generated through the member front page, which is basically just a forum as-is. So may as well make it part of the same system so people don't have to follow multiple things.

We have backend support for threading but it won't be in the initial release. The forums use a view more similar to the current blog view, but improved with pagination, read/unread notification, stickies, etc. It's pretty nice and IMO rivals any of the commercial forum software out there.

Tom wrote:

Forum_account wrote:

I wasn't sure what to think of it initially, but it sounds like blog posts will just be posts on your own personal forum. Does this also mean that these "blog posts" get threaded comments instead of the current, sequential list of comments?

"Blog" posts will just go in the main forums in a category of your choosing (so instead of having to check the old front page and the Community forum for community posts, you just check the Community forum). I say "blog" because in this context there really is no blog-- your posts are just part of a forum. Now there is a place for decentralized discussion, and that is around hub entries. So every hub entry (library or game) has its own forum and those, too, get somewhat crossposted to the main forums so that they can get more traffic.

The point is this-- the traffic to these blogs is purely generated through the member front page, which is basically just a forum as-is. So may as well make it part of the same system so people don't have to follow multiple things.

We have backend support for threading but it won't be in the initial release. The forums use a view more similar to the current blog view, but improved with pagination, read/unread notification, stickies, etc. It's pretty nice and IMO rivals any of the commercial forum software out there.

What about the custom styling though? I don't know how long I can go being separated from my box obsession.

NefariousDevelopment wrote:

Woah. Let's back up a little bit. From what I understand, you receive income from NEStalgia, and have even bragged about it. You are obliged to keep your fan base updated.

This is a common misconception that modern gamers have; that the developers of their favorite games owe them something. Especially frivolous things like "openness".

I don't owe my fans news updates about what I'm working on, but I choose to give them updates because it's in my best interest to do so. However, if it didn't benefit me in some way then I certainly wouldn't put so much time into writing blog posts just so that my fans could "be in the know" for the sake of it.

... and that's my point. I don't see any big benefits in BYOND making blog posts about what's in the works right now. Perhaps down the road it might make sense, but as things stand their time is probably best spent just getting the site changes finished.

I love when Silk post on something. I always get at least 5 minutes of hilarious material to read.

NefariousDevelopment wrote:

A misconception is a false view of a fact. This is, in fact, not a misconception, but an opinion. If somebody pays you money for a year of game-play, then my opinion is that you owe them one year of being a developer.

When you purchase a NEStalgia subscription you agree to the ToS that states that the purchase you're making is for the product as-is. That's not open to interpretation; that's a fact.

That's nice that you have an opinion though ;)