Excuse my ignorance, but I really don't feel like sifting through 155 comments (Which is one of the best things that this update fixes), so sorry if this has already (Probably) been mentioned but,

it really seems to be as if you're removing BYOND member functionality, and increasing the price. I understand that the new attraction is that only BYOND members can make hubs, but surely this is just going to result in proxy users (Copyright my idea, ;) ), users that will ask for say $1, and will put up a hub for a game based off request. Not just that but it seriously drives away a lot of the current attraction to BYOND, it pains me to say it but if this was what BYOND was when I first joined, I by no means would still be here now. It changes from Build Your Own Net Dream, you Build Your Own Net Dream And Pay To Have It Playable. Having said all that, don't ask me for a better solution, because I have no clue, but I really don't agree with this new update. (Sorry if I've come up with any incorrect facts here, I've been up for 48 hours straight, and it's blurry to read already.)

Regardless, it's nice to see that you're adressing a lot of the things which players have been asking for, specifically the screen drawing thing, but I'm dissapointed that you're still not optimizing the icon operations and/or making them client sided (Again, I'm running off assumptions that it hasn't already been done, I've been gone for a few months, I just remember it being one of the most logical and requested features).
As nice as a flash client is, it's nothing if it still results in a laggy experience.

I'll end this rant with a question though, does BYOND support Multi-Threaded CPUs (Dual cores etc)? If not, why not? And/Or is it planned? Are there workarounds? (I once had a little idea of that a world running off a cluster server, with different instances of Dream Daemon hosting each part might take more efficient cores, or just act dumbly and all bog together on the same one, I never tested it, but it would really be cool, my Sept core is kinda wasted on BYOND.)

Kaiochao wrote:

I don't know why people think having a hub is required for a game to exist.

+

Kaigne wrote:

Kaiochao wrote:

I don't know why people think having a hub is required for a game to exist.

Because there reliant on the BYOND community to play there games.

You'd just have to spend more time advertising it without a hub. Of course, that's quite a hassle, but you can just pay for a hub if you want it.

El Wookie wrote:

it really seems to be as if you're removing BYOND member functionality, and increasing the price. I understand that the new attraction is that only BYOND members can make hubs, but surely this is just going to result in proxy users (Copyright my idea, ;) ), users that will ask for say $1, and will put up a hub for a game based off request. Not just that but it seriously drives away a lot of the current attraction to BYOND, it pains me to say it but if this was what BYOND was when I first joined, I by no means would still be here now. It changes from Build Your Own Net Dream, you Build Your Own Net Dream And Pay To Have It Playable. Having said all that, don't ask me for a better solution, because I have no clue, but I really don't agree with this new update. (Sorry if I've come up with any incorrect facts here, I've been up for 48 hours straight, and it's blurry to read already.)

Yes, the structure of what you get for membership vs. what you get for free is changing. This is somewhat unavoidable; as you said, you couldn't think of a better solution yourself. The proxy thing is a recipe for disaster though, and anyone who pays a user for that is an idiot. For one thing, all the games will be listed under (and modifiable by) the proxy user's key. Any disputes that arise from the inevitable abuse of this by the proxy owner will end badly for both parties.

Regardless, it's nice to see that you're adressing a lot of the things which players have been asking for, specifically the screen drawing thing, but I'm dissapointed that you're still not optimizing the icon operations and/or making them client sided (Again, I'm running off assumptions that it hasn't already been done, I've been gone for a few months, I just remember it being one of the most logical and requested features).

Client-side icon operations were put in quite a while back. There's not a lot to be done to optimize them further, really.

As nice as a flash client is, it's nothing if it still results in a laggy experience.

Our tests have generally indicated this isn't so much the case, although there won't be any room for the client to "fill in" gaps caused by lag like it can do with gliding now (on a limited basis). Then again, the new pixel movement stuff has the same potential issue, and performs well in general.

I'll end this rant with a question though, does BYOND support Multi-Threaded CPUs (Dual cores etc)? If not, why not? And/Or is it planned? Are there workarounds? (I once had a little idea of that a world running off a cluster server, with different instances of Dream Daemon hosting each part might take more efficient cores, or just act dumbly and all bog together on the same one, I never tested it, but it would really be cool, my Sept core is kinda wasted on BYOND.)

This has been discussed to death in the feature requests tracker, but in a word: No. Multithreading is impossible for many many reasons. It is theoretically possible to take advantage of multithreading for some stuff like icon operations, or sorting the graphics for drawing, but code execution can't be multithreaded. There would be no way to do so without not only modifying the language itself (so that users could activate the feature, because it absolutely positively could never be done on an automated basis), but also heavily modifying the internals to prevent thread collisions on the same objects and pointers, and to resolve deadlocks. Resolving deadlocks is a whole subset of issues unto itself.

Lummox JR wrote:

The proxy thing is a recipe for disaster though, and anyone who pays a user for that is an idiot. For one thing, all the games will be listed under (and modifiable by) the proxy user's key. Any disputes that arise from the inevitable abuse of this by the proxy owner will end badly for both parties.

As much as it is a recipe for disaster, why aren't shell servers? The whole idea is based off trust, and regardless of whether or not it might be a huge success at first, I'm seriously considering it here. I'd be happy to help out other players, for a small price compared to the full price of a BYOND membership, so that they could get their games out there. This is also partly aimed at Kaiochao, but seriously who plays the games on BYOND? BYOND members do. No, having a hub is not REQUIRED for a game to exist, but look at NEStalgia for an example, a lot of advertising was done, and after the initial boom, who still plays? BYOND members (That were active before the advertising for the most part). This is also the case with SS13, I spend a lot of my time on /v/, and the occasional thread pops up discussing the game. When asked 'how do i even into ss13?', people simply reply with, 'byond, register, <hub link>, aquire ss13'. It's not a question of can a game run without a hub, it's a question of why should it need to? Surely the hub isn't the biggest failure for BYOND at the moment? It creates a zone where players can actually try out their games. If a post was made on the forum for a few testers, you might get a couple, but I'm far more sure that you'd get more from making a hub and just damn well waiting. Having said that, the new forum layout website update thing, looks like it will attract a lot more attention than before, so you might not be as silly as I originally thought.

Do I think that's enough to warrent paying for a hub? Hell no, and personally I'll try every little exploit and loophole to keep it as free as I can for developers to portal their games to people.

But once again surely just changing the actual hub and hub_password will again cut off the game if the proxy hub goes rouge? The argument is fundamentally the same, although the proxy hub does have a far greater range of tools they could use to mess with the game, but why would anyone bother? I really think that this will be, well abused is the wrong word but I'm going to use it for now, after this update, because I for one (If I were a new member), wouldn't bother buying a membership for that privilege, when I can instead pay someone else a menial sum for the same advantage.

Lummox JR wrote:

This has been discussed to death in the feature requests tracker, but in a word: No. Multithreading is impossible for many many reasons. It is theoretically possible to take advantage of multithreading for some stuff like icon operations, or sorting the graphics for drawing, but code execution can't be multithreaded. There would be no way to do so without not only modifying the language itself (so that users could activate the feature, because it absolutely positively could never be done on an automated basis), but also heavily modifying the internals to prevent thread collisions on the same objects and pointers, and to resolve deadlocks. Resolving deadlocks is a whole subset of issues unto itself.

We can't get the coordinate's of a player's mouse, so multi-threading is probably out of the picture. Whether it's possible or not, it's just too much to ask for.

Why not run multiple instances of Dream Daemon on the same server? Each instance of DD can only utilize one CPU core but each will get its own. The high CPU load is likely the result of many players, not the result of one complex algorithm. Spreading the players over multiple instances of DD on the same server distributes the CPU load over multiple CPU cores and shouldn't affect the network usage (if anything, I'd expect it to improve). It'd really help if BYOND staff could add better ways to manage things across servers (ex: fast and reliable server-to-server communication, a reliable way to transfer players to another server, etc.).

El Wookie wrote:

Nadrew wrote:

Or you know, people who do the proxy thing could have said entries suppressed. I doubt using the hub to directly make money for yourself while taking that money away from BYOND itself would end up against the rules pretty quick.

I expected as much, whilst as I said, I can't really come up with any better solutions, this seriously dissapoints me, which is actually a first for BYOND.

Today was a sad day.

Today is a happy day. The membership fee is finally getting a second useful feature! Who cares if people abuse it? That's their stupidity not ours, and I doubt it will have a negative impact on BYOND if people make money off of something they payed for.

As Vegeta spoke of, it doesn't appear BYOND membership really appeals to your casual player. Obviously, developers benefit from membership, but you guys should try to introduce some features so people that just play BYOND games (with no intention to develop) would also send you their cash as well.

El Wookie wrote:

But once again surely just changing the actual hub and hub_password will again cut off the game if the proxy hub goes rouge?

If you have a shell host for your game, you still control your own hub entry. If someone created your hub entry for you under their account, you do not control the hub entry; you can only make edits to it so long as you're listed as a helper, which the official owner can change at any time. That means if a proxy hub goes rogue, you're SOL.

The argument is fundamentally the same, although the proxy hub does have a far greater range of tools they could use to mess with the game, but why would anyone bother?

The argument is only the same if running a shell server and having the hub entry in your name were equivalent, which they are not--not even remotely. It's not a question of power so much as ownership.

Besides, we've already seen hub vandalism in some cases. The idea that a proxy manager could get ticked off and cut off one of their clients, or even take over "ownership" of the game (albeit not its source) is by no means a stretch of the imagination.

I really think that this will be, well abused is the wrong word but I'm going to use it for now, after this update, because I for one (If I were a new member), wouldn't bother buying a membership for that privilege, when I can instead pay someone else a menial sum for the same advantage.

And again, anyone who makes that deal on either end is a fool. For one thing, the proxy manager would be nakedly abusing TOS. There's no way you could have 10 obviously different games with different management show up under submitted hub entries and not have it go unnoticed, and even unlisted hub entries would eventually catch someone's eye one way or another. This would be magnified by any disputes. The clients meanwhile would be signing over complete control over their hub entry to someone who could easily abuse it, without any recourse whatsoever in the event of a problem.

To be honest I have no doubt someone's gonna be dumb enough to try to game the system anyway, but it's not going to work on any significant basis. Even where it's done, it's going to inevitably result in disputes that end badly for both sides.

Obviously none of the above concerns apply to the "production key" concept, e.g. Iccusion Entertainment. As far as BYOND is concerned, a production key is a legitimate entity. But that cuts both ways, because it means if you tried to use a production key that wasn't yours to publish your game, as far as BYOND is concerned that key owns the game.