I'm curious Tom, since porting Dream Seeker to the web, has there been any speed improvements from a rendering point of view, (multiple objects on screen, multiple objects on screen moving, higher FPS, etc.) or are those more on the server side?

It's nice to see that the HTML5 client is going somewhere. Web browsers are going to be powerful allies for BYOND. Things are about to get really interesting.

Tom wrote:

Rather than porting map-editor and other tools, the better tact to me seems to be to redefine our formats in such a way that the tools can themselves be written in DM, using the aforementioned standalone system. So we'd provide native hooks to read/write DMI and DMM, and we open-source this aspect of the code or outsource to our users here to develop editors. Not only would this be cross-platform, but it would be more powerful, since anyone could build in whatever features they've wanted for these things over the years.

Now one problem with this approach-- aside from just the manpower and scope of the project-- is that we wouldn't have a unified system, as we do currently. I think one of the real appeals of BYOND vs other toolkits is that it has a very low introductory learning curve. You can download the toolkit and can immediately dive in since all of the tools are there for you. Under the proposal, you might have to download a separate program like Eclipse to do the code-editing and then integrate it with these third-party editors for everything else. So hopefully there is a middle-ground here where we can provide the flexibility of third-party tools with the convenience of a single, straightforward configuration.

I would say that writing the development tools in their own language is an excellent plan, and one that I had myself. It is already somewhat possible, but would be quite hard and inefficient without actual native hooks. I don't think we should have to download something like Eclipse at all. The code editor should also be written in DM, with a new proc to enable direct and secure access to the compiler, assuming that it is available for use.

You could even release an "official" DM native Dream Maker to be integrated with the BYOND installer, so that there would be no need to look elsewhere for the development tools. It might also be possible to extend such an IDE with DM plugins that anyone can write, but that's a whole other thing.

I would like to point out that it would look really good to outsiders if the IDE can be written in its own language, because it would prove how reliable BYOND can be.

Also, now that I think about it, due to BYOND's native multiplayer, this would also enable team-based development and collaboration directly within the IDE! As if that wasn't enough, the HTML5 client might enable the whole thing to work directly in the browser!

It seems as though BYOND itself is ascending into the cloud.

Man, I've been waiting for the web client since I was a teenager... now I'm married with a kid on the way and I don't have the time to take advantage of it. Older BYONDers, how do you find the time? :/

Yut Put wrote:

don't sleep either

well if you don't want sleep, you SHOULD have kids. they're going to keep you awake 24 hours a day LOL

Unwanted4Murder wrote:

I love my life though. It's just so hard to find time to sit down and plan things out when you're working overtime, especially on a night shift (at least for me). I don't understand how people have time for hobbies while having a life outside of those hobbies.

Well yeah if you're working overtime. One week, my last job had me working 13 hour shifts. When you come home from 13 hours of unloading trucks and managing a restaurant, the last thing on your mind is developing a game.

Also, be aware that some of them are in college, which is their only responsibility at the moment. And since summer break still hasn't ended yet, that means they still have time to make dem gaems.

Uh, whats going to happen to already existing games?

Pokemonred200 wrote:

Tyrantis123 wrote:

Uh, whats going to happen to already existing games?

They'd still work, the HTML5 client is supposed to be a thin client, so games you've written will still work in it. From what I've taken from the descriptions, you will have to write the interface again for HTML5 to get it to work, though. (Although, it'll work the same for the PC version we already have)

To clarify, we have a skin translator in place for when the game provides a .dmf but nothing else. Ideally, it will provide a skin in a .dms file. We also have a default skin for when it doesn't have that. One consequence of this system is that you can have a game skin for DS and a separate one for the webclient.

The skin translator does its best to convert the .dmf to divs with the right control types. We don't have all of those controls (it will create the div anyway), but we have most of them. The main things you can't use right now are grid, tab, bar, and movable pop-up windows. All non-default windows get converted to pane controls, which are hidden when not in use.

If your game's skin is of the simpler variety and doesn't use any of the controls we don't support, it should have relatively good compatibility as-is. That covers the majority. We support a rather surprising amount of stuff.

To clarify even more, the current Dream Seeker isn't going anywhere, so all games can still be played in it unless the game developer choose to drop support for it.

Lummox JR wrote:

To answer your question with the proverbial thousand words:

Hnnnggggg <3

& Now on to the question as to why Tom is like a year late for the video c:

Doesn't want your jaw to hit the floor from oogling him too long :3