I would like to know if it is worth it to buy the book, since i absolutley love BYOND Dream MAker. But i dont want the book if it is like the help files, ....impossible to understand. I only want the book if it will actually teach me stuff about the dream maker program and how to do extremly complicated codes...

Personally, I love the book. I don't know if I'd say it teaches extremely complicated coding, but it gives you the knowledge you need to understand how things work--after that, you just make the code complicated by combining lots of small simple things!

Also, I would like to know, if I get the book, and it does not help me, is there somewhere i can go or someone i can email to get help?

These Forums are a great place to get help.

So is it worth getting the $20.00 book for what i am looking for?

Mine is indispensible... I laminated the cover and have a hundred notes in the margins. Plus, since BYOND itself is free, getting the book is a nice way to let those Dantom folks know you care!

Do you think BYOND will last over the years?
Do you think BYOND's future is good?

I sure hope so! I've been having a ball with it. It's a great, innovative, versatile product--the question is whether the world will beat a path to its door. Considering that we have a decent-sized user community and Dantom hasn't even advertised the product yet, I'd say the prospects look promising.

But i dont want the book if it is like the help files, ....impossible to understand.

I won't answer your other questions, as I have a vested interest! But in response to this, I can say that the book is not a mere copy of the online help files. It is honestly a lot better.

I hope to get some time in the near future to spruce up the online help. It takes a lot of work to write good documentation--especially when you are documenting a moving target. That's why we decided to write the book from scratch, rather than base it off the online documents, which predate many of the modern features in the language.

Second to the excellent and growing group of DM programmers who are working with the BYOND system, the documentation will play an important role in BYOND's future. That's why comments like yours above confirm my opinion that those documents could use another round of editing.

--Dan of Dantom

On 5/1/01 3:15 pm jobe wrote:

we have a decent-sized user community and Dantom hasn't even advertised the product yet, I'd say the prospects look promising.

( i dont know how you are getting the new members. i got the address off a search engin that is not up anymore. i tryed some searches on yahoo and ncbi but i could not find byond anywhere... i knew where it was i was just wondering how much they were advertizing it....)

It's listed on the dmoz directory...but they are not doing anything active to advertise it yet. That is coming Real Soon Now.

When we get the 1.0 version of DragonSnot done, we'll probably do some advertising things for that game...in particular getting it listed on appropriate game sites.

On 5/1/01 1:54 pm Dan wrote:

But i dont want the book if it is like the help files, ....impossible to understand.

I won't answer your other questions, as I have a vested interest! But in response to this, I can say that the book is not a mere copy of the online help files. It is honestly a lot better.

I hope to get some time in the near future to spruce up the online help. It takes a lot of work to write good documentation--especially when you are documenting a moving target. That's why we decided to write the book from scratch, rather than base it off the online documents, which predate many of the modern features in the language.

Second to the excellent and growing group of DM programmers who are working with the BYOND system, the documentation will play an important role in BYOND's future. That's why comments like yours above confirm my opinion that those documents could use another round of editing.

--Dan of Dantom

Dan, you're really clever. I like how you said "documenting a moving target". Genius! =)

Getting my two bits in, the BYOND book is both readable, complete, accurate, and in plain English. Though some of the newer features haven't been documented in it (since it costs a couple hundred to a thousand dollars to reprint books, unless you're related to someone =), otherwise, it is the most valuable tool you can have.

My testimonial was

"Dammit, you're not getting any younger, buy this book!"

but they refused that one, because of the word Dammit and because it sounds like I'm pushing for you to buy, and testimonials are supposed to be a summation of its quality. Of course, I can't think of any other phrase to say that it has more quality than that one. =)

So, yes, the book is worth $20.00. I had to pay some $50 CDN to get my replacement book, even, and the exchange is only $35 (the other $15 was the money order... God bless "free" trade!).

(Don't ask what happened to my first. Just don't.)


As for the Guides online, if you're really pressing for a period of confusion, then by all means, look at 'em. =)

I'm writing up my own Teach Yourself BYOND in 21 Days tutorial, but since that's a pretty big project it won't be done for a while. I'd make that free, but until then (at least a year) the book would be your best bet. In fact, the book would be your best bet anyway, if I do say so myself.


This might be of note; I have a flood of tutorials coming, but I haven't uploaded them yet, and most of 'em aren't completely finished. Among them are a debugging tutorial (which should be useful!), a statpanels tutorial, an explanation of the logical and bitwise operators, a newbie Quick Start tutorial world, a database of the procs and a quick description of their function, and a complete lexicon of BYONDspeak.

I've also compiled massive databases of medieval weapons, spells, professions, classes, stats, monsters, food, clothing, etc. The point of them aren't to give you stats, but rather, to give you names, so you can visualise them yourself. Those will probably be uploaded all at once when I feel I'm done with them.



<small>And though I didn't advertise it when I uploaded it a few days ago, feel free to check out my discussion on an armour system within the Tutorials section. But since I don't make any real effort to explain the code beyond the commenting, you're on your own if you don't get it! =)</small>

This comment disturbs me a bit. I realize that the guide and reference are quite outdated, but I was hoping that they would at least help rather than hinder the new user.

Oh, I think they do. The Guide in particular was very helpful for me when I was a wee Dream Toddler.

On 5/1/01 5:10 pm Tom wrote:

The alternative (which we have been discussing) would be to put a version of the book online, which I somewhat object to on capitalistic grounds.

How about this idea? Make it available through a BYOND world that the user must be logged into with a valid key that has already paid for access. It wouldn't be downloadable, but simply viewable while logged in to prevent mass copying and spreading all over the internet. Not sure if you could prevent select/copy/paste of the text itself, but it's something to think about.

I would like to say thanks to all of you who put in an opinion. I am getting the book in the next couple of weeks. Thank you so very much, stayed tuned for more games coming from me, Im pretty sure ill be here a while now.......