I doubt any of the games you mentioned are easily done with the current pixel artists on BYOND. Let's be honest, one of the most important reasons there are no new games on BYOND is because of the lack of pixel artists. Many developers here can't afford for them, and they normally quit for not seeing their project looking well.
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That's a rather lazy response.
There are countless art resources available online, from places like OpenGameArt.org and other online game development communities. There's more than enough out there to make full and polished games. Suppose that these publicly available and free art resources are insufficient for what you have envisioned. If the BYOND community doesn't have enough pixel artists, like you've said, what's stopping anyone from looking for a pixel artist from outside of the BYOND community (RPG Maker community? Gamedev community? Indie gaming community? GameMaker community? Unity community?) What's stopping anyone from learning how to make pixel art? There's dozens and dozens of tutorials available online for learning how to make pixel art. You might cry about not liking pixel art or not wanting to learn how to make pixel art because you're a programmer. Tough luck. Counter-Strike was developed by a two man team. One guy did community management and managed the website. The other guy made all of the art and did all of the programming. Hyper Light Drifter is being developed by a single person. He does all of the art and programming by himself, and has raised more than $500,000 in preorders. The original DotA map for Warcraft III was initially developed by one person, Eul. Hammerwatch was developed by two people. Want to guess the story there? Success is had by those who find solutions and diligently pursue them, not by those who whine about not having the easy way out on hand. | |
Sites like OpenGameArt do offer some good resources, but to be honest, I think they would only work for small games, otherwise you'd have to mix icons that do not fit well together.
You mentioned some enthusiastic projects, if by default we find some troubles on BYOND with the current community (it's small, they do not check the site enough to see if there's a new game being created, they're into animes, etc), we can't even think on spending days for posting advertises on Forums we haven't ever touched, first you need some experience on that (not all of us are good at looking for help). Now again, you can mention some successful games, but how many games that weren't made on BYOND failed too because of that? Tons I suppose. Let's imagine there are currently 30 programmers willing to create a game on BYOND: - Some of them will make it an anime game (for obvious reasons (too young to focus on original concepts...), 20 as minium {Some of these will even make their own continuations with old sources}) - Some others will make it anime-based (we have some games on BYOND based on One Piece, Dragon Ball, etc. They are normally anime games edited, or just made from scratch with that purpose. I suppose 6 programmers would focus on a game with these ideas). - And finally, the full-original programmers, their hardest task is not to quit their project for not achieving their goal fast enough. Maybe 1 or 2 of these will focus on making this game compatible with the current flash client, so they can get much more traffic. And now again, I've seen many games in my time on BYOND that never got a pixel artist for not being able to afford for it. I myself made many threads in the past, and I even received emails from people who were using ripped icons... You're completely right though, many people on BYOND advise the developers about using ugly icons when they start, because if their game is good they'll magicly find a good pixel artist willing to offer his help when it's released (I haven't seen this happening on BYOND so far). | |
You uhm ... get experience by doing a thing. So presumably you get experience of posting ads on other sites, by posting ads on other sites. As opposed to ... not.
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Is there any known negative public image of BYOND elsewhere? Saying "I program in DM" doesn't seem to carry weight because no one seems to know what the language is, and when they find out how much it does for you, it seems less impressive.
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I made a post on reddit in /r/gamedev (I think) for my little casual singleplayer games. It got a surprisingly neutral score with surprisingly no comments.
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I'm not awfully surprised, we've had precious little exposure among development circles. People don't take their creations to other sites very much at the moment.
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Magnum2k wrote:
Sorry but I just can't see mobile gaming as being the reason for people to "outgrow" PC gaming. Unfortunately, our computers are actually becoming our mobile devices. Mobile devices will be powering our PCs soon, and Windows 8 tried --the wrong way to bridge that gap. It's not a failed market. It's where it's going. ARM processors are starting to measure up to x86/64 CPUS, and I don't think it'll be long before they match up completely. GPUs are miniaturizing and the graphics API is shifting ever more in OpenGL's favor, away from DirectX. In ten years, there won't be mobile gaming, PC gaming, and console gaming. It's all coming together into two platforms. In all likelihood, it's going to be AndroidOS or something very much like it, and iOS competing for the primary marketshare. Microsoft is still trying to push PC users toward a more mobile-friendly experience, and while they seem to be going belly-up in the mobile market worse than blackberry, I think this generation is gong to prove to be the death of console-based gaming, and desktop gaming and mobile is going to end up merging to the point where they are indistinguishable. I for one, am for it. That said, the current climate of F2P/pay to win is going downhill and fast. Item malls are going to be around to stay, but the mainstream industry is collapsing hard. Private studios sans publisher and indie studios are coming up fast. The entire climate of the gaming world is going to be entirely different in ten years. Either ride the wave with us, or prepare to be upset with kids these days and their newfangled devices. | |
AnimeBeyond wrote:
I don't really get on this site anymore because I, as well as most of my generation, have really grown out of PC gaming. Mobile gaming is where the world is at right now, and I feel that as a business, BYOND does need to evolve and rebirth, because I would hate to see the place where I spent most of my childhood cease to exist anymore.  Filthy peasant. PC Gaming has, in fact, hit a few weak spots over the past couple of years, but it's now growing bigger than ever with the indie industry growing, and more and more console peasants being shown the light to GabeN's glory. All BYOND needs is to either go open source, or give us more control over the engine, that way we can make just more than static gameplay bird's eye view RPG's without having to CHANGE the engine. | |
Cloud Magic wrote:
Right right; like, for instance, complaining instead of working. That seems to be the 'fun topic' in everyone's heads. If they see the other big-name devs they look up to exercising this behavior they're sure to follow and do the same. Monkey see monkey do. Gonna have to agree with you, there. A lot of very capable and creative people on here spend more time complaining about the quality of the games than making quality games. I'm not attacking them, but when you talk THAT much about what's wrong with BYOND games, it probably wouldn't hurt to start your own project. | |
If PC gaming is just flash games then yes, it's falling behind. If it's games on platforms like Steam, then I'd say it's gaining more traction than consoles at this point. Most technologically savvy people I know that used to play consoles are now exclusively playing PC -- and many of the less computer-inclined are following suit. Consoles are becoming pointless to own for anything besides exclusive titles (and let's face it, not many of them are worth buying a console over unless it's Nintendo) and using them as a general media device for your TV. At least in the short term, I see the PC becoming the platform of choice. And just because everybody and their mother plays Angry Birds on their smart phone doesn't mean that mobile devices are the future of gaming. They're good for some things, and sitting down to enjoy a quality gaming experience is generally not one of them.
As far as BYOND and the original subject of this post is concerned -- yes, BYOND could use some new and creative games made by competent developers. It's hard work and very difficult to maintain drive as a hobby developer, but a few around here, including myself, are trying. | |
There are countless hyper-successful singleplayer indie games that could have been made on BYOND without running into performance hitches, games like Faster than Light, like Super Meat Boy, like Hyper Light Drifter, like Prison Architect, like Hotline Miami, like Project Zomboid.
What's more is, there are countless successful multiplayer indie games that could have been made on BYOND without running into performance hitches, like Hammerwatch, like Risk of Rain, like Gratuitous Space Battles.
BYOND is capable of ALL of these without running into problems with performance! And NONE of these games were developed with the mobile gaming market in mind, and NONE of these games were developed for the browser.
It's really easy to point the blame towards BYOND, but if you look at successful indie games and the graphical effects they pull off and engine requirements they need, just like I have been, you'll come to realize that it's not BYOND that direly needs to evolve; It's the BYOND community that direly needs to evolve.
Mobile support or Flash-client have very little to do with any of it.