With my current Tutor project some questions are surfacing now that I'm nearing its completion.
Does BYOND offer any GUI Installer abilites? Has anyone written anything with this in mind? Basically what I would like to be able to do is once someone downloads my software, is be given the choice to place an icon on their desktops. Then when that icon is clicked it makes a call to Dream Seeker, if not available it points to the download page and opens up a browser for download. If it finds it to have an aug. where I could just give the name of DME of the program and it would open Dream Seeker with my program ready to go.
The reason I'm asking this is I intend to market people who have never seen BYOND before or have the faintess what all this is. I want to make it as simple as possiable without doing away with the BYOND setup all together. Trying to make it as dummy proof and user friendly as possiable. I can see someone wanting my program, coming to BYOND and then complaining they can't load my software.
LJR
ID:153706
 Apr 16 2003, 8:05 am
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Yeah Im sure thats what it does Gughunter.
But I think he meant without the BYOND system installed on the users machine. Which I think is impossible right now. | |
Hmm.. well I was not meaning that.. but to make it more user friendly. Cause I can promise you once I start sending people to this website, the idea that you need to download some other software to use my own will turn some people off, and others it will just confuse. We need to have a way to make the download, seamless. Also creating a desktop icon that can just be clicked on that will both load BYOND and the BYOND software they wish to call with it.
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All of a sudden it strikes me that the whole thing can be explained to people in terms of it being like an emulator...
In order to play a ROM, you need to have the emulator itself... In order to play BYOND games, you need to have the BYOND program... Perhaps if the system was given a more straight forward install for players only that was a standalone "emulator" that was simply Dream Seeker, and then games could be downloaded like ROMs that can be loaded into the "emulator", it would seem a bit less confusing to many potential players... As it is, it's pretty much that way, anyways, but if it were to be further refined to work even more similarly to emulation systems, it would be more accessible... | |
BYOND pretty much is exactly like an emulator - eg. to play SNES games on a PC, you need a SNES emulator. The emulator turns the unknown ROM file into something the PC can understand, like changing the language of something so you can read it.
BYOND does the same, except it is called an 'interpreter'. It takes the BYOND code file and tells Dream Seeker "at the moment, it looks like this, (shows code) but I want it to look like this (shows game)". | |
Huh.. let me rephase this..
Say you have someone who has heard from a friend about some software you have developed and its on this site calleed http://www.byond.com Not imagine that person is one of your non-computer parent types, who basically know how to turn the computer on, move the mouse on the screen, type and click. Or say your grandmother, who just knows what a computer it barely, must less going into emulators. When I design a program, I want to make it as dummy proof as possiable, and accessable by the lowest common denominator in computer knowledgable people. | |
How about creating a setup program that installs both BYOND and your game in the proper directory at the same time, then asks if they want to put the game file on their desktop?
That's possible, right? | |
(I think so, anyway.)