SilkWizard wrote:
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. Please take notice of the fact that I'm not subscribed to your game. | |
NefariousDevelopment wrote:
Please take notice of the fact that I'm not subscribed to your game. I didn't think that you were, but your opinion on the topic of what my subscribers are owed would be just as irrelevant even if you were one. All that I'm obligated to provide to my subscribers is a means to play the game, and that's it. Everything else is icing on the cake. | |
SilkWizard wrote:
I didn't think that you were, but your opinion on the topic of what my subscribers are owed would be just as irrelevant even if you were one. All that I'm obligated to provide to my subscribers is a means to play the game, and that's it. Everything else is icing on the cake. I was unaware of your TOS. You are correct, you are legally not obliged to anything. However, you are speaking on the basis of a legal agreement between you and your subscribers. It's OK for me to disagree with your legal agreement just as it is OK for me to disagree with any government laws. Just because it is so, does not mean that I believe that it is morally or ethically right. You are covering your *butt*, which is apparently the right thing for you to do in your scenario. While most terms of agreements state that, "Game play may change during online play," yours states the opposite. My point, my opinion, is that if you are going to charge customers by the year, then you should be prepared to deal with a year's worth of overhead. I'm glad that you are not legally obligated to maintain your game. | |
Man... imagine if BYOND was open source and not only could they get more people to help out, but we could follow the repository change log and see what's going on without anyone having to make a blog post?
Pfft, what am I talking about. There aren't any benefits to going open source and the code is too messy. Oh well. | |
EmpirezTeam wrote:
Enzuigiri wrote: I made that post after I saw Silk post and left to go eat. Just finished reading the comments and it was pretty bland ._. | |
Well, unlike you, some people have their own project which consumes their time. Not everyone wants to cut his project's hours to help a worthless community.
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If only someone could figure out how to make a game engine powered by fannish entitlement...
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2. How much time do BYOND staff members (Tom and Lummox JR, primarily) try to devote to working on BYOND? I work 40 hour weeks and still find some time to volunteer to BYOND projects. The level of neglect BYOND gets seems like it must be due to active avoidance rather than simply being too busy with other things. Well balls i work that much to, makes me want to actually pull my thumb outta my ass and do some work on my game albeit ive pretty much stopped on it for awhile now. for no apparent reason other then being lazy | |
SilkWizard wrote:
You just insulted me for what I wrote, and then rewrote the exact same thing in your own words. Exactly what I'm talking about with people in this community being worthless. I did. To show you that you could've said the same exact thing without all the insults and drama. But, being the retard that you are, you need to insult everyone and beleive that you are better than everyone else. I don't know why you need to. But it's kinda annoying now. You're almost as pathetic as Falacy. Buuut... this isn't the place to point out Silk's obvious flaws, right? We want to know where the hell is Tom and what he has been doing... By the recent post, I think we have an answer, yes? | |
Tom is probably enjoying the removal of the few reason to get a membership one by one. Way to make BYOND a better place, useful community.
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These are the reasons why a lot of developers make their projects open source. I'm not bashing on anyone, but not that it would really matter since the language(DM) itself was written in C/C++, well as far as I can tell it was, and a lot of developers on BYOND aren't capable of mastering DM, yet alone C/C++. The reason why I brought this up is because potential game designers can freely add to the engine, and quite frankly, development will be a lot faster. I'm not saying you should resort to this option but if you think you aren't making any progress a post updating the community about what's currently going on can help at least.
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Avainer1 wrote:
Tom is probably enjoying the removal of the few reason to get a membership one by one. Way to make BYOND a better place, useful community. People rarely use it for what it was intended for in the first place. He's changing an abused feature on the site so that all the turds blogging about bases, or the kid that scammed them last week for their source, or the new anime game they are working on ( but won't ever release ) can be shoved into a dark, lonely corner so it's easier to pay attention to the content that matters. Like F_As contributions. I don't see the issue here. It's another step in the right direction just like unlisting anime rips was. | |
SilkWizard wrote:
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. That is *exactly* what this is about. I'm not saying "as a paying BYOND member, I'm entitled to regular software updates and progress updates", I'm saying that as someone who would like to see BYOND continue to grow and succeed, it's in BYOND's best interest to communicate regularly with its users. Many BYOND users realize this and provide information about their projects regularly. This habit would greatly benefit BYOND and the BYOND staff too. | |
F_a, you're certainly one of the top contributors to this community. It doesn't take buying 20+ byond memberships every week to contribute. You contribute with well-written, tie consuming and in-depth libraries for everyone to use free of charge. I, for one, have nothing but respect for possibly one of the top 5 most accomplished DM programmers.
However, this site is dying. I too, hate to see what's going on here. I've spent (off and on) a decade around this community and saw it at its highs and lows. There's nothing us developers (if you can call me that, due to my minimal amount of accomplishments and small portfolio) can do about it. Tom neglects the community due to how much money it doesn't make him. Instead of saying "that isn't worth my time", we need "how can I prove this so it does make more money?" There's only so much we can do if the staff isn't interested enough to keep up with the times and continue improvements! | |
Airjoe wrote:
Man... imagine if BYOND was open source and not only could they get more people to help out, but we could follow the repository change log and see what's going on without anyone having to make a blog post? That'd only be part of it. It's partially about development being slow or not adding some features that'd be much-needed, it's more about communication. Imagine if the BYOND staff blogged regularly about their progress on BYOND, what features they're adding, what new things will be possible, etc. Suppose one of those blog posts caught the eye of an indie game development blogger, who then realized that BYOND was improving and had decent potential, and wrote a blog post about it which raised awareness of BYOND to their readers (who are all indie/hobby game developers). Imagine if the BYOND staff provided direction to users and organized community projects to build sample games that people can expand on. That way the BYOND software could provide a blank slate for experienced game developers to create whatever they want, but it'd also provide pre-made kits that people can customize to the extent that their programming ability will allow. The BYOND staff takes a "hands off" approach to these things - I know their response would be "you're more than welcome to organize those community projects". I don't think they'd be able or willing to manage BYOND as an open source project. Yusuke13 wrote: However, this site is dying. I too, hate to see what's going on here. That's a very easy thing to say but I'm not sure how much it helps. BYOND has existed for a while so I don't expect it to disappear any time soon, but it's obviously not going to exist forever (in the year 2483, people probably won't be making BYOND games). Still, we can find ways to make the most out of BYOND instead of thinking "why bother?". | |
That would be a good idea. The majority of people on the site just want to jump into a source and change things anyway as opposed to learning the language and making something from scratch, and since it doesn't look like we're getting rid of those people any time soon, we may as well turn it from a negative ( the countless anime/fan-game rips ) into a positive ( a bunch of original rpgs, shooters, or whatever we make the pre-made kit to be ).
And then reiterate the fact that we don't encourage and list the former so people won't try using those kits to make anime games. =/ | |
The problem with not listing anime games currently is that there are many users who are only capable of ripping - they can't help it that anime games are just about all there is available to rip. If these game kits were available, those rippers could more easily make an original game. This would make it possible to take a harder stance against rips and fangames.
I'd see nothing wrong with kit-built games being listed as long as the changes were extensive and interesting enough. | |
I'd help out but I'm not a good programmer. I can make games, but I know next to nothing about being efficient. A pre-made kit by me would just be a bunch of bad programming habits disguised by decent artwork and presentation.
The most I'd probably be able to do is anything art related, or really simple aspects of games like login systems so that there wouldn't be a lot I could screw up. | |
The programming effort to create the actual kit is a small part of the whole thing*. The bigger issue is getting people to use the kits. People rip anime games because they like anime games. I think very few rippers actually say "I'd like to make a Naruto RPG... oh look, one is already available that I can modify, I'll just use that". It's not done as an act of game development, it's done as an act of revenge against the original games owner, or as a way to become GM of a game. While using the game kit is on the same technical level as ripping, I wouldn't expect it to get the same amount of interest.
That's where the BYOND staff could help out. Don't make the game kits be one thing that one guy is working on - make it a community project. Have the staff support the project by posting about it or by contributing their time to it. Make the game kits built into Dream Maker. Tom wants BYOND to be an easy way for people with limited programming experience to be able to make games and this is how to achieve that. It's quite possible that this kind of project could have a greater impact than plowing through some items on the feature tracker. * Plus, think about the quality of the code that rippers are using. We'd obviously want to make these kits easy to use and make them be good examples of how to program, but they don't have to be absolutely perfect. People are clearly willing to put effort into figuring some things out if it helps them make their game. | |
I don't agree that is the case with online games. Online games, by nature, require upkeep. That is why they often charge by subscription, not by purchase. If you subsribe to a game, it is quite like subscribing to a magazine. If you buy a book, it is quite like buying a game. If you subscribe to a game, you expect moderators to keep the game environment clean, you expect developers to fix bugs, and you expect to be informed when something important affects your game play. When you buy a game, you pay a one-time fee and you don't expect anything to change.
I believe it comes down to whether or not the payment for a game is recurring or one-time purchase only.