It's the same thing as far as we're concerned.

Aw man, I haven't been a member in over a year or so(March 2012 I think?).. shame I wish I was getting more hours at work or I'd surely support byond. :(

That was nice of you to do that for him :P

I'll start donating again when development actually starts happening .. *cough* flash client *cough* (or better yet HTML5 client) until then I suppose my money can just sit in a bucket.

Since Tom is actually answering here .. want to finally take a look at this, instead of neglecting paying customers? http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=93429

Thanks.

Neglecting core features that've openly been said to be worked on. Client-side processing, map instancing, flash client, ect. 500 was a nice step where BYOND needs to be, but since has slowed. If they could've held momentum; I'd actively donate $5/week. Might not seem much, but piled with everyone else holding back(ATHK, for example) until things that need to be added are added(or at least progress on these are shown); it's a fair amount.

Aff, I'm afraid BYOND Community is losing it's patience, even A.T.H.K, who's created great utilities like BYOND Panel, dislikes the development speed.

I understand you, to be honest I thought they were doing very well as they were rarely reaching their monthly goal (they did in December, and the first months it was up), but not anymore. I think the updates related to client-side are good, they do seem great but it's hard to know what has changed at all, I know they said something related to the interface, but that's all.

Some of the "pending updates" that people seem to want the most are -> Flash client (I do really wish this too, I remember some years ago when we got the first posts related to it, and then the moment it was released... yet after that nothing happened, at all), changes on Map (many people have been suggesting that the client should only receive data of their screen (appareantly we get information from all the map, and that'd imply many changes on procs like view(), so it'd take long), etc.

I'll probably donate to BYOND soon, but it'd be really nice if we got more information from Lummox or Tom. I remember back in the days when Lummox used to describe the functions the v5.00 update would give (matrix and so on), but after they really haven't said much.

I appreciate a lot their work though, perhaps they just need to communicate a bit better with their community.


By the way, have they really quit working on Flash Client? NEStalgia got greenlight on Steam, so I was expecting to see some announcements related to this.

There may be unseen development or maintenance that we're unaware of, and I think we deserve to receive regular updates on the development of BYOND. After all, this is a product that is not just used to play games but used to develop them as well, and IMO it's imperative for developers to be aware of upcoming & deferred changes so they can prepare for them.

It would answer questions such as "what is the status of the [feature]?" and make things clear for the developers i.e., the majority of users concerned with supporting BYOND and that may be able to support it in other ways than donations.

On the rare occasion when a question is answered it only answers a single question and doesn't provide any further insight into the state of the project.

Questions that I have are "have the donations helped out so far?", "how long will it take for the alternative client to be developed & how will it affect skins?", "what kind of problems is the project facing right now and may we try to assist?". An ongoing question in my mind remains "what's the plan?" as while I'm developing things I have no idea if something rolls around the corner that could improve my work or render it moot. If I wait a few weeks I can see if they're going to make that change I requested...

I strongly recommend the development of a page where such updates can be posted. Nothing has to be set in stone, but just having an indication of how much work needs to be done on something and where the priorities are (maybe a calendar?) really fills in a lot of the blanks.

N.B.: This is another reason why the ability to see the amount donated for past months would be a good addition. It gives insight into the total amount that has been donated so far, and the amount that was expected. It allows us to see if the times that there have been >$5000 in donations has helped to cut back on the times where there have been less, or if there's still a gap that could be filled.

A.T.H.K wrote:

Did you read any of the notes? Mainly bug fixes for multi threading and the introduction of "Credits" a thing that shouldn't of been made as no one should rely solely on the hub system especially if they want a well known and popular game, that system was a waste of effort, anyone can integrate PayPal or another system like Google Wallet if they actually tried.

Seriously 5k a month and they haven't shown all thy much for it...

.output, .winget, and .winset. I'm happy as a clam with the new stuff that they've worked in, and how much it allows me to do on the client-side of things.

I think you are seriously underestimating how huge server-side threading and these client-side features really are.

Not to mention that we are paying Lummox .. the BYOND community is more than capable of helping out on the project. BYOND has many talent people that know all sorts of languages, they would probably be more than happy to help with development for free..

Your point being? You got your requests answered and fulfilled that's ... Good I guess, it's a pretty nifty feature but I don't see why you got it done in a few days when there's more useful features sitting around without an answer..