BYOND Blue-Book, Second Edition

ID:181762
 
Sep 24 2009, 1:36 pm
Well I thought I'd post a little topic here as not everybody peruses the BYOND blogs.

For the past few weeks I have been going about various activities in the way of promoting BYOND, its development cycle with the intent of bringing in a much wider fan-base to bolster it's community with new and intriguing ideas.

Much to by displeasure, the DM Guide, as much wisdom as it contains, is seriously out-dated and not very user-friendly (in the form of visual aesthetics) which believe it or not, drives many people away.

Thus, I have set about creating 'The Dream Maker, Second Edition', or the Blue Book, Second Edition, as you all know it. It will contain everything the old book contained, as well as various edits to bring sections up-to-speed with BYOND 4.0 methods and conventions, as well as new chapters, including a chapter on the importance of including design in your projects, a chapter on working with teams, and a collection of the best articles available on BYOND with regards to the new BYOND 4.0 features and implimentations.

I have designed the front cover to be an updated version of the old Blue Book, and I have 5 chapters that are formatted that I'd like all of you to go through and let me know what you think - paying particular attention to the format, the colours and the fonts.

Any bits and bobs you find that may be classed as out-dated or obsolete, please let me know so I can make the neccesary adjustments, to save me the trouble when I perform one of the MANY MANY re-reads of the book to make sure everything is up-to-date. I'll also be posting the full book as a PDF online for people to look through and suggest changes and adjustments when it's ready - I hope I can count on you guys then as well.

The final book will be available at around $40 USD for a full colour version, or $15 for a black and white version. This can change though, depending on who I use for printing. Suggestions are welcome!

Here's what I have for the book cover:



Here's the first 5 chapters for review: Download PDF (Right Click and select 'Save As')
Sep 24 2009, 6:48 pm
Note for the cover: http://developer.byond.com is no longer the correct URL.
Sep 25 2009, 1:40 am
In response to Nadrew
That URL was maintained to always point to the correct place for years, so it might as well be a better choice than the actual current URL (http://www.byond.com/developer/). =P Even though that one would probably be maintained the same.
Sep 26 2009, 9:59 pm
AZA wrote:
It will contain everything the old book contained, as well as various edits to bring sections up-to-speed with BYOND 4.0 methods and conventions, as well as new chapters, including a chapter on the importance of including design in your projects, a chapter on working with teams, and a collection of the best articles available on BYOND with regards to the new BYOND 4.0 features and implimentations.

I'd like to suggest some more additions.
First of all, include exercise. Whenever somebody links to the (on-line version of the) guide, the reply is either 'I read it', or 'I didn't understand it'.
Young aspiring programmers read the guide like a comic, without effort to actually understand why the guide displays something as it does.
For most every literature used in school, you'll see that there is a section with exercise to ensure the student managed to understand the content and not only browse through it.
It might be best if you manage to include some 'actual examples' as exercise, such as 'beam', 'clone', ...
The end of the book should feature possible solutions to the exercise.

Now, some of the guide is a bit 'unfriendly' in it's set-up, given the age of the target audience.
For example, something as important as loop and conditional statements is hidden in a topic called Proc, when it really should earn an own chapter. Not to mention that binary arithmetic, as important as it is, should be set to the end of the book.
The higher the sloop, the less people will bother to 'bite through'. They just can't see how x = y^(z<<1) is going to help them with their 'cool new feature', though, funny enough binary arithmetic would be very beneficial in most every Naruto game (gates make a nice example here).

Now, when you have an early draft, the next logical step would be to browse the forum.
As I've mentioned before, the postings saying 'I didn't understand the guide I learn from demo/ripped source code' are very frequent.
Contact some of these and ask them if they would like to help you. Provide them with your version of the guide, then ask them to compile constructive feedback and work with them.
Oct 23 2009, 12:21 am
I know this thread is a month old, but I am really interested in this! I always wanted a Blue Book, but when I was a kid I wasn't allowed/didn't have the ability to purchase stuff on line. Now that I'm working I'd love to have a Blue Book! Why did the old one disappear?
Oct 23 2009, 7:46 am
In response to Ease
Ease wrote:
I know this thread is a month old, but I am really interested in this! I always wanted a Blue Book, but when I was a kid I wasn't allowed/didn't have the ability to purchase stuff on line. Now that I'm working I'd love to have a Blue Book! Why did the old one disappear?

The Blue Book is far out of date. There would be no point in having that old version for sale. Thats why it's gone, but then again... the Reference is basically what it was.
Oct 23 2009, 9:09 am
In response to Revelation Gaming
Revelation Gaming wrote:
Ease wrote:
I know this thread is a month old, but I am really interested in this! I always wanted a Blue Book, but when I was a kid I wasn't allowed/didn't have the ability to purchase stuff on line. Now that I'm working I'd love to have a Blue Book! Why did the old one disappear?

The Blue Book is far out of date. There would be no point in having that old version for sale. Thats why it's gone, but then again... the Reference is basically what it was.

Having a non-digital copy is useful as well as neat :)
Oct 23 2009, 9:15 am
In response to Ease
If you send a message to support with your address and paypal $5 to [email protected] (for shipping), I'll send you an old one. USA only though, because I don't want to wait in line at the post office.

Keep in mind that the old book is freely available for printout as a PDF here.
Oct 23 2009, 4:35 pm
In response to Tom
for free???? You mean I -didn't- have to pay for my blue book back in '01???

Haha I actually asked tom to sign my blue book and he left a very inspirational paragraph, it was great. Then my mom threw it away :(
Oct 23 2009, 6:07 pm
In response to Sariat
I enjoy having my hard copy of the blue book, even though I've never actually read it from front to back...
Oct 24 2009, 10:00 am
In response to Sariat
Sariat wrote:
for free???? You mean I -didn't- have to pay for my blue book back in '01???

Haha I actually asked tom to sign my blue book and he left a very inspirational paragraph, it was great. Then my mom threw it away :(

I would have beat her with a stick.

In all seriousness though, I would love for an original, physical blue book.
Oct 26 2009, 10:48 am
In response to Tom
Tom wrote:
If you send a message to support with your address and paypal $5 to [email protected] (for shipping), I'll send you an old one. USA only though, because I don't want to wait in line at the post office.

Keep in mind that the old book is freely available for printout as a PDF here.

Ah man! Curse my Englishness! Thanks for the awesome offer though, and the link to the PDF.

~Ease~
Oct 26 2009, 11:38 am
In response to Tom
Tom wrote:
If you send a message to support with your address and paypal $5 to [email protected] (for shipping), I'll send you an old one. USA only though, because I don't want to wait in line at the post office.

Keep in mind that the old book is freely available for printout as a PDF here.

$5? Wow, that's damn cheap for a book, how are you making any profit from that? I'm pretty sure it costs more to make the book cover, print the paper and everything.
Oct 26 2009, 11:48 am
In response to Haywire
Who said anything about profit? They're just left-overs from back in the day when it was on sale from the website.
Oct 26 2009, 12:09 pm
In response to Haywire
Haywire wrote:
$5? Wow, that's damn cheap for a book, how are you making any profit from that?

Tom wrote (and you quoted):
paypal $5 to [email protected] (for shipping)
Nov 23 2009, 11:41 am (Edited on Nov 23 2009, 12:03 pm)
This book looks great. Please come out with preorders, it would allow people to purchase other people it online for the holidays, and you could make some kind of print out after you purchase it that says Byond book preorder shipped "insert date here" so that people could give to eachother for the upcoming holidays ^_^

Ps: Suggestions I have would be to have in the guide: How to set up an on screen macro, methods used in iconning to make images look 3 dimensional, talk about how to use the on screen status bars, teach how when you click on one spot you can have a hud image displayed of that spot, how to make a basic regeneration set up.
Nov 24 2009, 2:25 pm
Sorry for the very belated reply, but I almost never check on the community section of the forum anymore.

AZA wrote:
It will contain everything the old book contained, as well as various edits to bring sections up-to-speed with BYOND 4.0 methods and conventions, as well as new chapters, including a chapter on the importance of including design in your projects, a chapter on working with teams, and a collection of the best articles available on BYOND with regards to the new BYOND 4.0 features and implimentations.

Be careful with the parts on design and teams. While I mean no offence, we are short on our supply of people who can speak with authority on these topics. There are some good posts on the forum with advice on such things, but there's also stuff I see on the forum that's called good practice which is neither here nor there, or sometimes barely worth arguing about, or in some cases outright wrong. These topics have many books dedicated solely to them, and there are lots of resources out there. If you really feel the need to include them here, just be careful that you don't include anything that's going to make a mockery of Byond, especially by hedging out serious developers that might actually see some of it and decide something that blatantly goes against industry standards is incorporated into our material.

I've never actually read the blue book, so I don't know what all is in it and am not judging, and I am not going to bother reading it now. I'm just saying be careful with what you print in your name.

Here's what I have for the book cover:

It still says that it includes stuff for Byond up through 2.0 in that picture.
Nov 24 2009, 5:11 pm
In response to Loduwijk
Also, don't forget that there is no such thing as developers.byond.com anymore.
Nov 24 2009, 7:15 pm
In response to Jeff8500
Jeff8500 wrote:
Also, don't forget that there is no such thing as developers.byond.com anymore.

Ha, says you! I'm still using http://developer.byond.com/forum to get here.
Nov 25 2009, 5:13 am
In response to Airjoe
Same here. That's what I remember, so that's what I type in whenever I want to get here. developer.byond.com just redirects to byond.com/developer