I switched my major to Business and my dual major to multimedia design for the purpose of helping to reform quality in businesses such as BYOND, and of course for my own personal marketing ambitions.
I would like to hope BYOND sticks around until my education is finished, because I still feel I have a great deal to repay you for, for your sense of forgiveness from previous encounters we had in late 2012.
I actually have some things I have sketched and written out in my notebook I would like to talk over you with about BYOND, how it looks right now, and a mixture of 'physical' changes that could be made towards the site and the various social media presences BYOND holds.
Actually I was supposed to get back to ACWraith some time ago.... Well damn I guess I am already lagging behind.
Thanks. That message has been absolutely spamming our error log.
Gakumerasara wrote: Rather than saying BYOND owes you something, that you hate it because it doesn't do exactly what you want, how about saying thanks for the platform that is the reason SS13 exists at all? It's not a matter of exactly what I want, it's anything at all. If there's an expectation that someone will make a good game to grow the platform I think I'm justified in pointing out how difficult things are for developers. I didn't make a game here but the experience of volunteering a bunch of time trying to improve one has been a nightmare. There are some simple diagnostic tools that are vital for programming that just don't exist when you're working with DM. | |
Btw, how much -does- it cost to operate byond atm?
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MagicMountain wrote:
Thanks. That message has been absolutely spamming our error log. If it's a refcount error, with anything other than the refcode being "5", there's usually a way to avoid the messages. (See id:1224959) | |
Well that was interesting reading through all of that.
This thread just keeps going and going. When it comes down to it, we are the ones that give BYOND value. I like BYOND; BYOND introduced me to a whole new world of computing and a new hobby. It was marketed to me as such, in fact. I came here expecting to learn how to program, and looking back I'm very happy for how easy BYOND made it to create and publish online games. There are other things like BYOND out there, but BYOND is the only one that gives me exactly what I want. It's easy to make games, and all the networking is done for me. I've stuck around BYOND since I came here around 7-8 years ago, but I always hear other developers tell me about the certain things that BYOND makes so easy that are such a pain on any other platform (networking being the biggest one). I want to continue supporting BYOND, and I hope there are enough here like me that will at the very least allow BYOND to survive. Maybe not grow, but survive. I have all I need right now to make many great games, and I'm working on them right now. Just as Gaku said, I'm plenty content with how BYOND is at this very moment. If we keep talking like this then there definitely won't be any hope for BYOND. Shut your mouths and have some fun. | |
After reading through the latest posts in this, I think many people are just simply expecting too much of BYOND.
It was never advertised as a 3d Particle engine It was never advertised as a Skyrim simulator It was never advertised as Pressure: The Game Engine (SS13 fans should know what I'm talking about) Of course there ARE issues with the software, graphical operations should of been switched to the client a long time ago, I'm not saying that it's flawless, but SS13 is a HUGE game. It really is, I recall viewing a bug report where they have something like 2^16 different atoms/datums in the node tree. That's ridiculous, BYOND was never built with a game like that intended, and as such it's not really your job to come and complain when it can't do so. On the other hand SS13 is the largest income of players to date, although if I recall correctly Falacy's hentai game was pulling more at one point but I digress ;), and as such it shouldn't of been treated quite so harshly. I don't sit here typing this pretending to have a solution but, for what it offers, BYOND does a damn good job of delivering on it. Nobody thought it would handle pixel movement until Forum_A stepped in. Many people told me to my face that BYOND wouldn't be able to support instancing until, funnily enough, Forum_A stepped in. I think it was even Forum_A who said "Don't think of BYOND as a game engine, think of it as just a programming language, work from there to build your game engine around its few limitations and there's not much it can't do for you". I've been with BYOND on multiple different accounts for... I gotta say about 10 years now (Which is horrifying when you consider how old I was at that point, and I joined for a DragonBall Z game at the time, hah!), and I really don't want to see it gone, but before it can even begin to solve its problems, it needs more programmers that are willing to create fantastic projects. People like Forum_A, Yut Put and Silk games have all defied the neigh-sayers and produced excellent, smooth working games that are excellent and fun, even the SS13 team has accomplished this, albeit now running into DM's limits. What we don't need are people like Falacy who walk in, try to make something ambitious (Which is fine), hit a snag, blame it on DM and then give up hope of ever fixing or working around it. (No intended offence on Falacy though, I think he's a fantastic programmer whose accomplished more than I can ever dream to do.) As a conclusion I'd like to say that, if anything, switching many of the graphical operations to the client machine will make far, far flashier things possible (See: Terraria, StarBound, SPARK), but if there isn't the resources to do that, then if you want to save BYOND, get off your ass and make a game, and make it to the best of your capabilities, maybe even set up an open source project or two. -El Wookie | |
Tom wrote:
My advice to the SS13 team-- and this isn't facetious at all-- is to stop all development with BYOND and focus entirely on the SS13 remake project. Obviously you have some intelligent developers and if you have a central body to organize a proper repository, you should be able to recreate the project in a more suitable engine. You have one huge advantage in that the design is already complete and tested through the BYOND version, and at this point it is a matter of overcoming the technical limitations that the usage of BYOND introduces. SS13 outgrew BYOND's scope pretty quickly on, and it's only out of necessity that the game has to be ported to another platform. I feel like some posters here misunderstand that this criticism isn't born out of a personal vendetta against the platform or its developers, but from frustrating years of wrestling with BYOND trying to make it play nice with what we're trying to do. I'm sure there's plenty of people that would be willing to put in the time and energy to fix some of the bigger problems with BYOND, you only have to open that door. | |
* Few limitations
* BYOND Pick one Practically the only thing BYOND can do properly right now is move 10 sprites around on the screen, after that it has a full meltdown It was never made for running in the first place it seems, I still hold by that it would be a rather simple'ish thing to fix, but noone is actually trying anymore BYOND was a decent platform 10 years ago, but its left behind | |
Tobba wrote:
* Few limitations You haven't made any game so far, and I've just noticed that you only have fan'd Space Station 13, like the rest of guys complaining about BYOND's Limitations here. Right, intelligent coder, who hasn't made anything yet, tell me what is BYOND limited to. Because I've played beautiful games and smooth games in BYOND. Much BETTER than Space Station 13, but they weren't advertised so much so they never got enough players. You guys are really annoying me with your "BYOND was good x years ago, now it's too limited!" stuff. I doubt it's limited, I've seen games with a lot of stuff working well with 100+ players on BYOND. Learn to code, and make a good game. Maybe Space Station 13's developers were too young when they coded the game, and I haven't seen any update on it for many years, which would easily explain you why there hasn't been any change so far in BYOND, because you haven't played anything else but a dead game. | |
Did you really just tell Tobba to learn to code? That's pretty funny.
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Eternal_Memories wrote:
You haven't made any game so far, and I've just noticed that you only have fan'd Space Station 13, like the rest of guys complaining about BYOND's Limitations here. Well, I'm sorry about what SS13 did to your ego, so I decided to take a look at your nice library of well made games, and cant help but notice that the only still functional game was some naruto mess (I wonder where I've heard that before) Your so called well made and smooth games also managed to actually be less smooth than SS13, albeit with less extreme lagspikes, good job And since you're apparently also delusional I'll just have to point out that SS13 is still being activly developed, only branched up, so you may want to modify your definition of "dead" to something more sensible Learn to code, and make a good game. Albeit within the limitations that are currently set, that might be a bit difficult for you | |
Tobba, BYOND is not as limited as you may think. If you think it is, then maybe this isn't the place for you.
If I can make a game that perfectly mirrors Megaman physics, is as smooth as the original games, uses three layers of parallax scrolling, and works absolutely flawlessly online with people running around and shooting constantly, then just about anything is possible with a little ingenuity and creativity. People just need to make games. | |
Fugsnarf wrote:
Tobba, BYOND is not as limited as you may think. If you think it is, then maybe this isn't the place for you. Most of BYONDs limits are defined by what framerate you're targeting The question isnt if a game will lag, the question is how badly it'll lag No matter how much SS13 steals fame from your anime naruto goku crystal weed world games, its what keeps BYOND from becoming a 90s relic, I've been wanting the developers to simply crawl out of that hole, but that doesnt seem to be happening | |
Tobba wrote:
The question isnt if a game will lag, the question is how badly it'll lag That's not necessarily true. It all depends on your host and the resource usage efficiency of your game. The framerate limit for consistently smooth online play seems to be 30 FPS for most people who have hosted my sidescroller. You can easily make quality games with that framerate, and with better hosts I'm sure you could do even better. | |
Tobba wrote:
Fugsnarf wrote: I've read some of your posts, and get the impression you're pretty smart. Then I read posts like this and scratch my head... It is possible to write a game that doesn't have to process past the tick-length (your so called "lag") by ensuring that not too much is done in a single tick. The fact that you call it "lag" makes me think you're 12 (you should know... it's not network latency that's the problem, afterall, byond isn't providing you with a fiber network). The problem is people program things until they work, and move on... instead of making sure they work well. Unfortunately, you are dead set determined to prove otherwise. I've seen SS13, its not programmed well, and definitely not programmed to perform well. Blaming BYOND for poor performance with code that isn't optimized is like telling Microsoft windows is bad because someone's indie game crashed while you were saving. It makes no god damn sense. Sure, you've found a few things here and there that could be improved, the VM and core is very old, but no one is going to change it. So if you're still here, and you know what you know, then... WHY are you still here? | |
Fugsnarf wrote:
Tobba, BYOND is not as limited as you may think. If you think it is, then maybe this isn't the place for you. Yes, if you want to compare BYOND to the NES it is not very limited, but making a copy of a brilliant game designer's NES masterpiece on a system that does all the networking and graphics for you doesn't really speak to that system's limitations. Try to figure out why something complicated isn't working correctly with the debugging tools available, then get back to me when you realize you can't find one. | |
FIREking wrote:
I've read some of your posts, and get the impression you're pretty smart. Then I read posts like this and scratch my head... It is possible to write a game that doesn't have to process past the tick-length (your so called "lag") by ensuring that not too much is done in a single tick. The fact that you call it "lag" makes me think you're 12 (you should know... it's not network latency that's the problem, afterall, byond isn't providing you with a fiber network). The problem is people program things until they work, and move on... instead of making sure they work well. Other than that the reason that a lot of BYOND games actually do stutter like shit is network lag and the bad networking implementation, it doesnt help that any sort of processing will just worsen the delays Lag doesnt necessarily mean latency, it means falling behind In general, the simplest of things can cause a whole 100ms of stutter, which by todays standard is unbearable As for your question, because we're stuck with it | |
Can't these posts be deleted or something? It's pretty obvious that this guy has no idea what he's talking about and nothing positive is going to come of responding to him.
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I do want to be clear that I'm not talking about shutting this down anytime soon. I just wanted to let people know where we stand-- that unless the finances pickup, we can't really expect to continue development much (but then people don't think we're doing much anyway) and/or we make take a hiatus to do a spinoff project. I've always worked off the potential of this project rather than the reality, because I figured we'd get a few hit games to drive traffic and that would put us on the map-- and it still may happen-- but it is so slow going and I have run out of money that I just can't count on it anymore. However, just maintaining the hub services and website shouldn't be a big issue, and we can see about getting works in development (like finishing the standalone and flash) out to the public.
Thanks for the compliments.