Hello everyone! I apologize for the delay.
In this issue, Within BYOND contains a new section, BYOND Interview, and our victim is Ter13.
Special thanks to EnigmaticGallivanter for helping with the interview.
BYOND Engine
Tom and Lummox have been hard at work, as have the beta testers. Aside from several bugs being fixed for the web client and Dream Seeker, several features have been added.
DM Language
- The Exit() and Exited() procs now take a second argument that includes the new location. (This is redundant for Exited(), but is done for consistency.)
- world/IsBanned() now takes a new argument indicating the connection type.
Webclient
- The input control now supports the no-command, is-password, and multi-line parameters.
- Verbs have been added to the webclient's info control. Additionally, the info control now uses tabs.
DreamDaemon
- BYOND can now support users of a thin Web client. The server will deliver all the files needed to play. In Windows, Dream Daemon can disable this by unchecking "Allow webclient" in the World menu. On Linux, you can use -nowebclient or -webclient options to turn this support off or on, respectively. A permanent setting can be placed in cfg/daemon.txt: "webclient off". By default this support is turned on.
If you run into any bugs, please post them in our Beta Bugs subcategory and if you have any questions, please post them in Beta Testers. You can find the patch notes here.
BYOND Games
Space Station 13 has seen some updates, specifically servers Baystation 12, TGStation, and Goonstation. I've yet to directly talk to each servers developers, however links to their change logs are as follows: TGStation, Baystation 12, Goonstation.
Vault, described as a multiplayer roguelike with turn-based gameplay, is currently being developed by D4RK3 54B3R. Not much information has been released about the game, unfortunately.
Developed by Mouchy, Quinix is an open-world MORPG that focuses on PvP. Set in a world divided by five nations, players choose which to serve and fight over territory, such a towns and villages, on behalf of their nation. While players can go anywhere they please, town guards will defend their territory from players from opposing nations. The game features four main classes, Warrior, Mage, Rogue, and Cleric, each branching into its own subclass. For example, if your class is Rogue, you're subclass options would be Archer, Scout, and Assassin.
That's just the tip of the iceberg for Quinix. Developer Mouchy is looking to have a closed beta sometime this week.
Kozuma3 , developer of Platformer, has released version 7.0 and version 8.0. These updates include additional music and sound effects, shifting from interface controls to on-screen objects, item drops, polishing current systems, progress on skill trees, and moving in a more RPG-ish direction. For interested artists, Kozuma3 is willing to pay for artwork.
Ninpo Online is set in the Shinobi world and currently being developed by Dark Moon Productions. Not much information was given, but videos can be found here regarding Ninpo Online's progress.
According to Lavitiz, "As of 09/01/2014 all development on Harmony Online has come to a halt." The developers are focusing on real life matters for now. More information can be found here.
Ishuri, one of the developers for Spirit Age, confirmed that the team, for the most part, has been disbanded with the exception of Zane444 and one of the programmers. Spirit Age is being remade on another engine.
Age of Magic is currently looking for artists who can touch up the games terrain and match it's current style.
Konlet announced RP Infinite. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it's about. Based on the information and screenshot provided, it's a MUD? Hopefully the developers can clarify for us!
Creator's World received an update recently. In addition to a new security system, developers added a new building system.
Sigrogana Legend 2 saw three updates within the last couple of weeks. Patch notes for versions 0.94, 0.95, and 0.96 were posted on the hub's forum. For interested parties, Devourer Of Souls made another post, September's Update Roadmap, which contains four weeks of planned updates for this month.
Awhile back, RP Unlimited's hub was deleted. AnthonyHawkina made a new hub and made the game downloadable.
Azusa RP had an accident with the source, effectively putting the game back to version 1.3 from version 1.5.5.
Taint_thewizard announced a new survival game, EverArgo, as part of the Taint saga.
Tag Turvigal, recently announced by Travylleb, seems to be an extreme scifi version of the children's game "Tag". Aliens have planted a bug on each human and the only way to get it from killing you is by touching another, passing on the torch. If you cannot tag someone within 20 seconds, you die.
Darkened Skye is an RPG announced by Necro Gaming. Here's how the developer describes his game: "Darkened Skye is an old school style online role-playing game comparable to the likes of Dransik and Ultima Online. While leaning towards more of a old school style, the game itself will be a fun and fully featured time waster you won't regret unlike those 'other' moments you spend on the computer."
Tiempo de luchar, developed by Kickstar My Heart, seems to be an action based platformer.
BYOND Resources
- Xirre is looking for users to help him stress test DreamDaemon.
- Mr_Goober made a utility to convert binary, decimal, and hexidecimal numbers.
- Pokemonred200 made a library, Audio Handler, for your ... audio handling needs.
- Kumorii made a library, Maptext Nametags, for your ... nametag needs. "Hello, my name is Lige!" or so I'd say during our 30th BYOND Anniversary party.
- Mr_Goober made yet another resource, ZML - ZYNKCO Markup Language.
BYOND Interview
Ter13
Ter13 joined BYOND June 12, 2001. He's currently a BYOND Moderator and has made several contributions to BYOND, specifically libraries and demos, all of which can be found on his page. He also started a short series, Snippet Sunday, which gives a lot of useful information to newbies and veterans alike.
The Q & A
Q: You've been in the BYOND community for 13 years, you've probably seen many developers come and go, games change, and even yourself change from HrH (player) to BYOND Moderator. What has kept you in our community?
A: Well, I was never really a moderator for HrH. I was just a player. I actually never moderated for any games other than SS13. As for what keeps me here, it's the fact that DM was how programming really started to make sense to me. I knew C++ and Java a bit before I started writing code in BYOND. Eventually, the syntax kind of reached out and grabbed me. What I love about DM, is that the environment is limited but highly capable. At first sight it seems like you can only do so much with it, and some things would be impossible with it, but after some serious investigation and experimentation, there's always a way to trick it into doing what you want it to. It's an astoundingly capable engine that has managed to hold my interest in tinkering with small experiments for years.
Q: There has been a thread in the off-topic forums about where and when people started to learn programming, what’s your backstory?
A: Both of my parents were programmers. My mom and dad actually met while working at a software company in the midwest. Both of them used to work on old punchcard systems together. My dad eventually moved on to writing Assembly, low-level C, and later Java. My Mom eventually got out of programming and decided to raise us kids. I was about ten years old when I first started trying to learn to program. I picked up some Borland C++ 3.0 books, and read through those, and after a few years of little success tinkering with it, I picked up a Java 1.1 book and started working my way through that.
I eventually found BYOND, and started experimenting with it, and over the course of a few years, really started to get a knack for programming. The rest just came with time.!
Q: Snippet Sunday and your other tidbits of game enhancing code has been a wonderful addition to the Tutorials & Snippets section of the forums, did you have any particular motivation in releasing these education resources to the community?
A: My motivation for Snippet Sundays was actually pretty poor. A lot of my Snippet Sundays code was trying to show people cleaner ways of going about what they normally do, and explaining some of the features I felt like people were using in such a way that caused them huge headaches. I'm actually getting increasingly busy recently, as I'm going to school full time and trying to finish my BA in Computer Science. That's caused a definite lack of time and energy on my part for producing quality snippets and examples.
I am fairly proud of a few of the techniques I demonstrated during the run of that series, particularly the snippet where I talked about object oriented hierarchy and databases. Around here, Forum_Account and I are kind of seen as two of the big "gurus" of our respective times here, and I got the opportunity to have an argument with him regarding design and structure, so that was definitely a good experience.
Q: Continuing on Snippet Sunday, are there any future additions to this series coming at us this month?
A: As for continuing Snippet Sundays, if I have a particularly good idea strike me, I'll set aside a Sunday. Unfortunately, I have no idea what else to add to that series.
Q: What are you most excited about for the future of BYOND development?
A: I'm pretty excited regarding the recent HTML5 client release. Unfortunately, most of my pet projects recently have been single-player, so I can't really actively contribute to the testing of the client. I'm happy to see Tom and Lummox pounding away at the bugs left behind by the initial release. Hopefully we someday get some means of embedding a single-player game in the browser, though. I don't particularly want to make an always-on RPG, so the current state of the HTML5 client is not entirely up my alley yet.
Q: Is it hard out there for a mod?
A: Moderation on BYOND isn't quite as tough as it could be. We move a lot of misplaced posts, delete the occasional spam post, and otherwise try to keep things going smoothly. Moderating any online community comes with a big "kick me" sign on your back, though. The thing I've taken away from this last year of moderation, is that if we've done our job correctly, people should have no idea that action had to be taken.
These days, I mostly move posts and edit DM tags into Developer help questions. I leave the heavy lifting to Fugsnarf, Nadrew, and Lige.
[EDIT] HORY SHET I JUST REALIZED THE BOXES ARE BACK! ALL HAIL THE BOXES!