I think that the issue here has several driving factors:
1) BIG RPG games tend to be the "dream" of game players. Almost every developer here is a gamer at heart, and so they would kill to play their dream RPG. A huge, open-world, deeply immersive, etc. etc. etc., type of game. And so, each and every one of them sets out to create that game. Everyone wants to do what hasn't been done before, but what they've always wished for. So the projects, by design, start out with very large goals to be BIG RPGs.
2) Due to BYOND's history, it is vastly more suited towards creating RPGs and similar games. Platformers and action games and others are all possible, and have been for a very long time, but they require a lot of extra work to set up. You can build an RPG on BYOND "out of the box". So people also tend to fall into this path out of laziness.
3) BYOND's multiplayer capabilities are a huge selling point, and it is hard for developers around here to ignore them and create singleplayer games (which is vastly better for platformers and other "Kongregate"/"Newgrounds"-style games.) So most developers have an overwhelming desire to create a multiplayer game (and ego pushes us towards wanting to create a massively multiplayer game), and what genre is best suited for this? RPG.
So these factors (and likely more that I'm missing), lead many BYOND developers to only even consider RPGs for their projects. The system is so skewed towards that end that other genres aren't even regarded as options.
SuperSaiyan I think has hit the nail on the head in regards to the multiplayer aspect.
As that is one of the main reasons that brought me to Byond was to be able to easily make games that are networkable with other players. Where as most games, such as the ones you pointed out either have no network multiplayer or only 1-2 at a time. Thus, it comes to the idea that when you give a bunch of people shiny things to play with they get distracted. Byond was made to allow developers to make MMORPG games, not to make platformers. However, as developers we are doing BYOND a disservice if we are not using BYOND to make games that are the same or better than other game developer programs, such as GameMaker, RPG Maker, etc.... I think our lack of pixel artists to help supply free assets does cause it to be much harder to develop games rapidly to draw in pixel artist to form a team. Especially now that Icon Share's servers went down and all those resources are gone it has become that much more difficult to get .dmi assets. | |
BYOND was made to allow developers to make customized MUDs, not MMORPGs.
Obviously we're aware that BYOND is far more capable of just about anything 2D now, including action platformers. I just wanted to clarify that. | |
MUDS are 1D MMORPGs, and it helps to reinforce my idea that you say it was "made" to allow developers to make Muds, now they can make 2d games, and in the future maybe 3d games.
The point I get at is that I think many people get lost in the developer process and thus leave Byond from developing. Such as some people start by modding other games because they only need to focus on the features they want to add, and don't have to be as overly creative as making an entire game from scratch. I think that with BYOND there are so many features that many people get lost as to the features they actually need to make there games do what they want to, and most are not dedicated enough to figure it out. | |
MUDs are not massive. They are small and simple dungeon crawling games with RPG elements, at the core. Multi-user dungeon suggests a very broad genre, but it's actually very specific.
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I've played muds with a room count in the thousands so ues muds can be massive as well. Such as achaea or aetolia I don't remember the exact names anymore.
My point is that byond started as a small 1d type of platform and had grown to include 2d. Thus, there is no excuse why byond could not do something like terraria, don't stave, lost vikings, etc.... | |
To be fair, MUDs have not been called "Multi User Dungeons" for about 30 years now. They're Multi User Domains, and it is not uncommon for some of the larger ones to have thousands of people playing at once.
I wouldn't say 1000 people is massive, but it's a hell of a lot bigger than anything any BYOND game has done (and probably could do). | |
Since I'm somewhat curious: are we talking about MUDs in the sense of graphical dungeon crawlers, or the ones that are more akin to multi-player text adventure games?
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I was talking about DUNG, which was basically a multi-user graphical dungeon crawler.
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SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:
The skill is here (if not within single individuals, then within the community's resource pool), the drive is not. That's the key. I am pretty comfortable that I have the skill to make most of those games listed. Drive? Nope, not nearly enough. Currently playing Manacept full time rather than working on one of my multiple projects. ;) | |
I have always had a major difficulty to decide on any kind of single project, so I keep jumping from one experimental project to the next, which of course is a very helpful way for one to learn and gain experience.
Due to having little free time recently, I have decided that instead of a specific game, I am going to build up a RPG Framework, which could be use for any projects, which I could possibly want to make, without needing to start from scratch. Having a solid foundation each time. And the foundation can be improved on over and over again to make it more perfect. The major weakness of the whole thing is that I work alone, I do the graphics, programming, mapping and concepts/ideas and all the rest on my own. Everyone can't be a universal genius, can they? So I would agree that the major part of success would be a reliable team to work with, however that would require a leap of faith, which I am not ready to make, just yet. The major unique selling point is the simplicity and multiplayer option, which BYOND supports. The skill is definitely out there - HARNESS THE SKILL WITH THE WILL! | |
I think that BYOND has become a stepping stone form of developing tool. Such as in school we use Karel the robot to learn the basic concepts of programming.
Such as you have Byond that allows you to learn the basics of Simulation Software Engineering, Graphic design, algorithms, and many other needed concepts for future projects. I think that is were people become confused in thinking that BYOND is like the other Game Developing Software's, but sadly it is not. This is not because of being less powerful as the DM language is a torero complete language (think that is wrong way of spelling it, can't remember) just that there have been no "Famous" games produce by a BYOND developer as of yet as most get discouraged and then quit such as it seems you are doing Yut Put with Epic Legends. | |
Yut Put's problem with EL is the limits BYOND puts on itself for map size and content, I believe. He's also not having it hosted or promoting it, so that's not helping it gain any traction.
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Sad to say there's many ways he could go about it but it's so easy to just blame those darn BYOND bugs and limitations! To each their own. I just find it funny that so many people talk negative about BYOND yet stay around here for years. I enjoy watching them slap themselves in the face so often.
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I agree; I'm just stating what I believe is Yut's reasoning. I've heard some great ideas on how to handle this problem, especially from FIREking. It just requires more work on the developer's end. And potentially money.
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Didn't FireKing just release a chunk loading library that would allow you to have an infinite sized map?
Also Byond is a C based language and you can #include .cpp files. Thus, you could in theory write your own library to include into BYOND to handle larger map sizes, 3d calculations, basically anything you can think of. The youtube videos he has posted so far look pretty good, using some meta tags and the such and linking to them he could probably draw in a decent crowd as his game looks as good as Dungeon of Dreadmore and that game sold like mad on Steam. | |
He did. It's just a demo though.
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Akando5959 wrote:
This is not because of being less powerful as the DM language is a torero complete language I believe you're looking for the term "Turing complete." Akando5959 wrote: Also Byond is a C based language and you can #include .cpp files. Thus, you could in theory write your own library to include into BYOND to handle larger map sizes, 3d calculations, basically anything you can think of. This isn't even remotely true, I'm afraid. You can utilize dynamically linked libraries (.dll, .so) to augment your programs, but simply #includeing .cpp files will do nothing, as DM's compiler only compiles, well, DM. | |
Ah I'am sorry Lord, still learning the difference between .dll and .cpp, but as you stated you can use the .dll so in theory could modify BYOND to do things you want it to do that may normally be limited by the software itself.
"Turning Complete" was what I was looking for. | |
RPGs are not particularly complex games. They're usually very simple to design and don't require much technical knowledge to make. From a coding stand point, I find RPGs much easier to make than almost any other genre of video game.
The problem is they just take absolutely forever to make. And the longer a game goes unfinished, the more likely it is to never be finished.