The Magic Man wrote:

I think you'll find if you pay to use programs like Game Maker, Unity and so on, there will be no splash screen in the game that says you made it using a specific program.

Also, for people who want to move away from BYOND, forcing the BYOND name into their game is kind of preventing them from doing this you know? Incase you forgot, BYONDs reputation on the rest of the internet is kind of bad, and it's actually a smart idea to hide any association with your game and BYOND if you want people to play it. (I can post evidence of like 50 different people saying they simply wont play a game I'm making because it's made with BYOND)

One final thing, I have yet to see a single person say anything positive about the new splash screen on other websites. To the point that people are actively saying do not upgrade to it to avoid them.

Unity games usually show a "Unity" loading screen.

The Magic Man wrote:

One final thing, I have yet to see a single person say anything positive about the new splash screen on other websites. To the point that people are actively saying do not upgrade to it to avoid them.

It'd be great if we didn't need the ad revenue to keep the project alive... But we currently do, and the splash screen is part of that.

The new features will phase out the ability to not upgrade, frankly, which is why pushing them, and showing them off is going to be really important to get developers starting to adopt them.

$100 fee to distribute a game and then still forcing ads into their game is a smart idea.

Tom has repeatedly stated that the standalones will cut all ties to the site, meaning that there won't be ads on standalone games distributed using it.

I don't know where this is even coming from, given next to nobody even uses the standalone converter anyway, and those that do already negotiate a cut to BYOND.

Rather than worrying about how much BYOND is cutting into your profits, why not spend time polishing and promoting your games? Make something even mediocre, and you can get your $24 back from donations pretty easily.

I see a lot of complaints about how hard it is to distribute a game using BYOND... And mostly by people that don't have a game they are actually trying to distribute and promote themselves.

You've got some decent stuff in your portfolio there, if you put some effort into actually trying to polish it and get it out there, I'd be willing to bet that you can expand your fanbase significantly.

The Magic Man wrote:

I myself have experienced people refusing to play a game I'm working on right now just because it was made with BYOND, when just a week before they were literally begging me to hurry up and release a demo.

Sounds like those people aren't worth catering to then, anyone who changes their entire opinion about something because of one detail that doesn't actually change anything probably aren't worth having around.

If you have so much of a problem supporting BYOND, which is providing you these tools for free then use something else.

It's not SS13. It's a website made up of millions of people, and none of them have anything positive to say about BYOND. If you search you'll find a lot of other BYOND games on there as well, ranging from DBZ/Naruto ones to games like Nestalgia. No one has anything good to say about any of them.

I can't remember the name of the website now, but there is one website that scans Google for opinions on a word you enter and then returns results. BYOND returned overwhelmingly negative results.

I'm not saying BYOND is bad. I am saying the majority of peoples opinion of BYOND is bad.

Oh, I know. That thread was regarding SS13, I closed out. Nothing anyone there says is going to mean anything to me, because most of it is probably nonsense.

And I agree on the game quality of BYOND being poor; but that's not BYOND itself's fault. It's the fault of all these crummy devs releasing crummy games. Because of the way the popularity of these BYOND games seems to go, if it's worse than others, kids will flock(probably because of kids running it). If it's better than the others, you'll have a handful of mature players that come and go; because they have things more important to do than game(often times the management in these games is almost non-existent, which only works with more mature players). Leads the better games to wither away. Then there's always the lazy developers that never finish anything(just because they stop working only about 1/100th of the way through).

The Magic Man wrote:

Sure, but if people hate BYOND, and wont play a game made with BYOND and then you tell them your amazing game is made with BYOND, will they even try it?

What's your point? If people only care about the engine, then why bother using it?

BYOND has a poor reputation because there are few examples of quality using the engine. If you don't want to bother promoting and marketing your game, it's not going to help BYOND's reputation.

It's kind of a catch-22 situation, which could easily be solved by simply writing your game in HTML5/Javascript or flash.

Helping people to cut all ties from BYOND doesn't help BYOND to survive or grow, so what incentive does that give Tom or the other devs to help you ignore the plight we are all in right now. The possibility of BYOND ceasing all operations due to lack of funding is getting increasingly real.

Some of us in the community are actively trying to do something about it, rather than just whining at Tom and Lummox to fix X and Y, so that we can release super awesome idea Z, and give nothing back to the community in so doing.

Paying $100 to have a stand alone game and a membership fee isn't helping BYOND?
The way I see it is, these people are simply paying an upfront fee to support BYOND rather than trying to rely on method that is not reliable and probably doesn't generate a fraction of the money that simply throwing $100 at BYOND does (ads).

You've already been told that the standalone clients won't be plastered with referral links and splash screens. Tom has already confirmed repeatedly that there is currently no way for him to monetize or redirect games using the standalone, which is entirely why there will be an up-front fee.

He even said if there is a method of monetizing the standalone, a per-developer license probably will not cost the developer anything.

Your complaint is moot given that the premise of your concerns are supposing a reality that doesn't line up with what we currently know.

And no, the number of devs that are likely to purchase the $100 license to use the standalone aren't really going to help BYOND to sustain its bills. Sure, that $100 is going to be $100, but it's ONCE. It doesn't bring increased traffic into their site, it doesn't bring interested developers to the party, and it doesn't bring accolades to the engine itself even if the game made using that standalone is a breakaway smash hit. BYOND would be helped more by that developer's game not being a standalone, and being played by 1/10th of the population that would have tried it anyway. This is a problem, and it needs addressing. You are right, but the content of your complaint, I can't help but think, is missing the point entirely.

You'd think, with a lot of the attitude toward Tom and Lummox in a lot of these threads, that they are personally holding a stick and chasing off hordes of people trying to throw money at them.

Most of the people that voice these complaints are sitting on a mediocre game that uses none of the advantages that BYOND does actually have. At the very least, BYOND is going to teach you a lot about programming, art, and problem solving. It doesn't compare to the other game development tools out there, and frankly, it doesn't have to. It could improve in a number of ways, but we're too deeply in the niche of introductory networked game development tool to step out of that niche easily and quickly.

Our best bet for survival is continuing down the road that v500 did, which is improve the current implementation the best way we can, whilst in the background, motivated community members try to get the ball rolling on using these new features and demonstrating how to implement systems that take advantage of the new features.

Yes, we need some help in the portability and no-hassle, installation-free, disposable-play capabilities area, but at this point, few of the games around here are even flash-portal quality, and few devs are even interested in making games that would make sense on a modern flash gaming portal.

The results are never good mind you and I doubt I've introduced anyone new to it or resulted in a single one of them has given money to BYOND. But I've tried.

I've done the same, and the results are always negative. But that's not due to BYOND itself. It's the standing culture HERE in the community, and not a problem with the wider web.

It used to be the same way with Unity too, back before Unity 3.0. People laughed at it, and said it was a terrible engine, and had no chance of making it.

All it takes are some seriously impressive games and tech demos, and a community of clever and enthusiastic developers using the software. And we're getting there again. Right now, the community is in better shape than it's been since 2003.

Don't just take my word for it either, ask people that know, like Flick, Lummox, and the other oldbies that are still hanging around from the "glory days".

I've met two people in real life who have heard of byond. The first was the guy who introduced me to the site back in my middle school days. The second was a guy I met in a programming class in high school who apparently was working on a naruto game, until his source was "stolen". Meaning he gave it to the wrong person.

I've never met anybody in person who already know about BYOND before I told them about it. Considering the size of the community in relation to the entire world, I think it's impressive to meet one person by accident who's heard about BYOND.