EG: Appreciated, but no thanks.

At this point I am not particularly concerned about (nay, I'm completely against) turning BYOND into "big business", because I don't want to keep working on it. For instance, I would not accept an investor in _this_ business at this point, because that would mean committing to a lot of future development and I consider this a mostly legacy project. I hope people appreciate the work we've put in and consider kicking back something to continue its existence as a shareware-like system.

I believe the new ad model (which, on paper, should bring in something), the improved pager, some donations and hopefully a hit game or two on the horizon, will make enough to keep the project alive. If it does better than that, then we can consider bringing someone else on to make larger changes or we can organize more of a community / opensource effort. Whether that is a business or not is in the eye of the beholder.

I like some of what EG said. As for what Tom said, I'm still aiming to promote new games to be made. For every free server I give away it requires a new and unique game to come with it from the person who wants the server. For majority of my BYOND Membership giveaways, the requirements are to be working on a project that is unique, have some background in the community, or just plain active everywhere. I hope in the long run this encourages people to try harder to make their own ideas and get other people to participate in on it.

I used to work on solely making Naruto, DBZ, and Bleach games. Then I realized.. It gets old. Yeah, I love those shows. And no doubt, DBZ is an amazing show and will always be as I still rewatch it this very day. But I decided it was time to do some original things in the year 2010. That's when I worked on an RPG with my own icons (some of Teka's too. In fact, I've replaced my grass, tree, and walls with his icons that he donated to me. I still have my old grass and tree. But they're more of a dark theme. Not enough lighting.) and story line. I would have to say 2010 is when a lot more RPG games came out and some other unique ones too. There's still much hope left for BYOND. A lot much. If you've seen Flysbad's "Upcoming Games" post.. Which I think was deleted.. You'll see this to be true.

"Long Live BYOND!" lol.

Thank you for this post Tom (more-so your replies). I want to tell you I appreciate all the effort that was put into expanding this outside it's niche market. I promise to finish and release my game, and I hope I can help byond continue as the project it is (I'll start with a membership when I get some money :P ).

i'm always saddened to see how little fanfare and financial success BYOND has received through its many years, since it deserves more. but don't forget, Tom, what has come of BYOND. some of the best times in my life were had inside of BYOND games, and from interacting with everyone else on this site. my best friend of 10 years is a result of this site. it's a lovely place, and thank you for making it!

So... I've been around since 2003 and maybe a little before that but it's been so long I can't remember. That should earn me a Tin Badge or something. Anyway, I've been a paying member for a fair amount of those years until the blogs were taken away. When those went away, I lost my outlet (pathetic or not) and couldn't figure out why I should continue to pay. When I think about it, I "support" a great many people every month such as Comcast, Verizon, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, and so-on. In each of those cases, they provide me with something that I "need" even if I grit my teeth about it every day. When it comes to BYOND, it's like you said, the platform isn't the thing I specifically value because I have to work (a lot) before I get the value I desire out of it.

While not being a paying member suggests otherwise, you have my full support. There isn't a day that doesn't go by that I think "I wish I could help those guys figure out how to make the project successful".

Over the years, I've developed a pretty strong pattern of crank out work, burn out, design, repeat. There's one thing I tend to do year round and that's think about how to attract, retain, grow, and build a community of game developers that can work together for our common good.

I tend to find myself criticizing how the community is handled in terms of communication, organization, support, training, and team work. Criticize is a strong word but it's fairly accurate way to describe my grumbling. I've always felt like BYOND was missing it's "soft skills". I've watched a fair number of BYOND elites (if you will) come and go. Some could be considered invaluable assets. Seriously, you had super smart people working for nothing and willing to do so much more but they were effectively allowed to burn out and disappear. If you asked them to remake Pac-Man, they would have. If you asked them to create a physics engine, the would have. If someone gave them a direction or outlet, they would have continued on. As with all "Type A's", they push past the limits and then boredom and leadership frustration moves them on to something else. Good thing I'm not smart or I would have been gone a long time ago. ;)

The Resource Center came about because I wanted more collaboration and envisioned a higher quality support service for BYONDers but the project fell short even if the Resource Center was fairly successful at least in terms of design.

After the Resource Center project went offline, I've had a few significant life events that prevented me from engaging heavily on any BYOND project and so my membership expired.

I've been mulling about in the background trying to monitor the announcement page even though it requires a freaking manual to figure out. I actually missed this post because that page is such a disaster. Anyway, here's my BYOND wish list as I toil on a new game and wait for something to happen. Actually, this lengthy post is an early sign of burn out on my new game which sucks. Dang-it!, that was fast. Gah, the wish list.

- I wish there was some way I could contribute to the project and earn incentives.

- I wish more specifically that I could somehow benefit by creating training and truly consumable documentation for new developers. I know that I could do it many times better than what we have today.

- I wish BYOND would take what's left of the community and focus on one or more collaborative game efforts until a game makes it big. I think old members would flock back at this prospect. Screw adding more features and questionable site redesigns is what I'm trying to say. Your efforts would be better served on attracting millions of potential customers through a popular BYOND game. I think you've done some of this with NEStalgia already.

If you want my $upport, you've got to get me invested some how. After 10 years, I can safely say (I have no other choice) that I suck at making games even though the joy of trying doesn't seem to go away.

I still think BYOND has everything we need to make successful green light games. I'm a bit out of the loop but I'm still here.

Anyway, BYOND's been a big part of my life over the last ten years and for that, I thank you Tom. I truly wish you, this project, and everyone who's involved the very best outcome.

Using the opportunity to have this post read by you Tom, I would like to ask question of different matter. How did you make your own programming language and compiler for it, where did you start? Did you use tools like Lex or Yacc? Just for learning purposes I want to try to make my own programming language with compiler for it. As for programming languages; is knowledge of C/C++ enough or more languages are needed? How long does it take to make your language and compile first program it in? Thanks.

@Tom:
Once I will become a game developer(A professional one, and for career purposes). 20 years later, people will knock at your door and then you'll say everything you did in order to change my dream of making manga(2008-09') to making games by presenting your failed project which would increase the rate of people joining BYOND. I owe you a lot, even my future. Without this project, I may had been stuck trying to learn how to draw nice characters. There are a lot of people, I am sure, that will help you. Sooner or later. Remind me of never drinking whiskey while thinking of making a project.

EDIT: I haven't contribute this much to BYOND. The only thing I spended was for buying memberships for myself($44 spended). I don't even have a job, which would decrease chance of supporting BYOND. It may not seem, but at the moment if I had 10$ to spend, I'd spend it on BYOND or a 3 week membership to someone. I am not really worth my word, but I can tell you that if I could contribute to BYOND a lot more, I would.

Axerob wrote:

i'd like to donate once I graduate from college(soon) with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and get a decent paying programming job

You say that like it's a given. Ah, youth. I miss being optimistic.

Axerob wrote:

Having a bunch of developers... collaborate
polished

Ah, youth.

Well, here we go:

Tom, since you poured your heart out to us almost three months ago now, I'd like to chip in to the cuddle-fest.

I showed up here in 2000, lurked for a good while, before I finally decided to dive into BYOND, and actual game programming.

DM wasn't my first language, but it was the scaffolding that I built all my other languages on. I had tried and failed to learn C++ and Java both at the time, but it just wasn't working for me.

The entire crew of people you mentioned? The core users? Yeah, those people taught me. They helped me figure out what I was doing. They wrote the tutorials that finally made me understand what I needed to be doing. And between Lexy and Lummox, they verbally shamed me into being not only humble when asking for help, but also doing everything I could to figure it out before running to the boards.

I admit, I left around the time the blogs came out. It just didn't feel like home anymore. I missed the black and blue site of BYOND 2.0 and 3.0. I branched out. Learned a handful of languages (C/C++/C#, Java, Assembly, LUA, Ruby, Python, Actionscript2/3, Javascript, and about a dozen other markups like: HTML/CSS/XML/SQL/YAML), but BYOND always kept calling that same siren song.

I'm not sure if you remember, Tom, but I once wrote you a letter and a check for a membership, plus donation. I was pretty sincere in my thoughts in that letter, and I still, to this day, want to see this project succeed.

As for BYOND, I think we're almost where we need to be, to be honest. A handful of minor features, and maybe a proper port to get our niche into a more accessible venue.

Fact is, Tom, I credit you, Dan, Lummox, Deadron, Guggems, Nadrew, and the whole group for about 80% of what I know. You guys didn't spoon feed me. Hell, Tom, we've talked three or four times since I've been here. Even so, DM has given me the perfect environment to thrive as a systems programmer. It simplified it so that I could learn the theory, and provided me with limitations to challenge my creativity.

Thanks Tom, here's to hoping you don't open-source the project too soon, and that we can get some new blood working toward a better BYOND.

We will start beta testing some new stuff pretty soon, hopefully next week. Lummox JR has been making some posts in the Feature Requests forum regarding a few new things (some multithreading & better client-sided controls).