I want to know, are there any plans for Byond as a programming language, to take a turn and become less attached to the hub, and more of something that people can run on their own.
Not necessarily a standalone executable or something like that, but just more inclined toward being run on their own, without help from the hub.
Now, for instance, I can see that anyone willing to spend a lot of time and effort on a game, and be rather...annoyed at having it listed among a bunch of DBZ, and generally "lower quality" games. It doesn't suggest much for the game which that person spent so much time and effort on.
I wonder if it'll ever be more to the point of having a website for a mud, with a link to click here to download the required files, and click here to connect... I'm not suggesting telnet either, just making it so people can get into a game without having to get involved with the byond as more than a required file, even though, I'm sure, right now that's against Dantom's best interests... Perhaps after Byond has become sufficiently well-known.
I want to know if there are any plans of this happening.
ID:137500
 Nov 1 2001, 7:45 pm
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Eh...
I think what I don't like is having the hub on Dreamseeker, so that whenever someone runs your game, they always have a list of other games they could be visiting too... That and it just kinda looks bad, IMO. Maybe some kind of downgraded version of byond that is designed specifically for connecting to games, without hub links or any pager stuff, just the game. Dreamseeker would be the one with the connections to the hub and pager... But, that probably won't happen. | |
Dantom said one of the things on the long term List will be the ability to customize the client much more and move buttons. Perhaps it will include the option to move them to null ;)
When they work on the HUD stuff we discussed a while ago ( [link] ), I'd like to be able to remove everything but a ractangular map window and input box. (Maybe even replace the input box in the hud if I feel particularly masochistic one day. Macroing every key would be rather tedious.) | |
I'd be quite happy being able to strip down the whole thing to look like a fancy telnet, which is pretty much what I wanted it used for anyway :oP
No Pager, No Hub, no arrow buttons, no adds, no anything, just text input and text output. Maybe someday. | |
Hate to say it, but I think ideally I'd like my games to have as much affiliation with byond as most muds do with telnet...
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Foomer wrote:
Hate to say it, but I think ideally I'd like my games to have as much affiliation with byond as most muds do with telnet... All indications are you should be able to do that with the next major version... Meantime, I think most of us are getting huge value out of the current setup. I know that approximately 50x more people have visited my games than would have without it. | |
Foomer wrote:
That's true, but, unfortunitely the people that I'd get from it, aren't the people I'd want. Well you can turn all that off you know...package your game for download from a website, use the .exe functionality so that it has it's own executable for starting the game, make games not visible in the hub, don't have a banner. If players don't want the pager they can turn that off... | |
We have never wanted to present BYOND as a you-write-it, we-own-it sort of system. I can't tell you how much that thought irks me! Yes, we would like to make a living off of this project, but in my opinion, that isn't going to happen in an environment that turns off quality game designers.
Please be aware that the hub is something we are actively developing. It takes time to reach the level of generality that we are aiming for, so what is there now does tend to throw everyone into one bag, which is certainly not ideal. You would like to trim these excess features out of the interface, but here's the deal. We're not going to make that possible until we get the hub/banner system to the next level where I think you may reverse your decision. I don't like to talk too much about development I am about to do, because that jinxes the effort, so please just trust that we are working on this! --Dan | |
I don't understand what you are asking for -- what requires the hub?
The hub was added very late in the history of BYOND, and games certainly don't depend on it or require it. It's just one way to advertise and distribute games.
If you want to start a website pointing to games, or have your game downloaded standalone from a website, you can do that no problem.