Clearly, you have gotten yourself a source from somewhere. Is the source Bleach/Pokemon/Dragonball/Naruto? Was it programmed by anyone other than Falacy? Well, first thing you'll want to do when programming one of these games, is learn how to start over.
As isn't hidden about me, I programmed a Zeta rip for a while. In fact, that source was a big part of how I learned to program here. The more I progressed, the more I realized; these sources are terrible copy/paste fest. Every move has near the exact same code, redundancies everywhere. I'm not saying you should give up on your favorite source(not saying you should steal other's work, either!); just be prepared to do a lot of deleting and re-writing. I understand you like a game and want to do your own spin on it(it's what I did!). Part of that is wanting the game to be better.
I noticed, after several months of just learning how to optimize what was already there, that the content that was already there was cluttered and unnecessary. For instance, in the Zeta rip, all techniques were essentially copy/pasted from one another, with people that took over through the years making their own tweaks/'fixes', without fixing the old ones and simply copy/pasting their new format to the other techniques they added. Each had the same/similar procs for movement/damage. I never went through and took the time to remove all the different obj types and simply assigning icons to them. I did, however, generalize the different /obj/s into /obj/technique/s and rewrote the standard projectile/collision proc and removed each unique obj's copy/paste code. I could've took it the extra step and rid the source of all the 'unique objs', but I had planned on going back and making a good number of the techniques differ from each other and saw the object tree as a shortcut.
OKAY, after that rant, back on topic; find generalizations in the source(trust me, there are plenty) and compress them, finding ways to alter/optimize them along the way. Redoing most(all) of the source's mechanics/systems is going to happen to make your game decent(at best).
DO:
Rewrite as much as possible, everything in your source is horrible.
Weed out generalizations in the form of copy/paste and make them more global.
Remove anything that doesn't add to the game, you don't need 20 libraries and just add 'glamour'(poor 'character handling', 'character creation', unnecessary).
BALANCE your game, nothing/no one should have a clear advantage over another.
Modernize your game! BYOND's had tons of improvements and features implemented since your source was leaked/released!
Finished/Remove what's started before adding/making your own content.
Do NOT:
Just add in whatever you feel like/is requested from another source(make your own, pls).
Just rename the game and change the "staff".
Make everything super OP/have something be 'the best'.
EVER charge fees/subscriptions, you didn't make the IP(or the game you took the source from), you didn't license it, don't try to profit from it. It's stupid, disrespectful, and unlawful.
Think that doing something halfway and moving on is okay, I did this a lot early on and still find stuff I forgot to complete when I look back through some of my work/have questions on some of my work.
Of course, the usual troll commentary will ensue after posting this. Don't care, just trying to make the BYOND 'rip' situation a little bit better with some advice from someone that programmed for one.
Now I'm tired and don't feel like continuing this post further, though there are many things past this to make your 'rip' decent(at best!), goodnight.
Tl;dr: Everyone thinks a abuse/bug-free game is key to success(ha!), but seemingly everything that becomes popular off these sources are heavy in those aspects. If you use 'admin' verbs, you're abusive towards the player, unless you're giving them stuff(by BYOND rip standard, of course). If you want a cheap way to make your game popular, be friendly and give everyone everything to be 'the best'. Otherwise, work hard and learn to program fairly well. Of course, once you learn to program well, do something original.
Coded examples:
Commonfound stat increase proc(Naruto).
ID:1861423
 May 29 2015, 8:20 pm (Edited on Jul 26 2015, 5:11 am)
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I haven't looked through his sources too closely, but from what I recall; his source was leagues above any other leaked/open source available when I was skimming through all the sources I could get hold of to try and learn different ways of tackling obstacles(spoiler: I didn't learn much of anything, it's a waste of time).
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Also, I should've just said 'is your source a fan game?' instead of listing IPs, since the vast majority of the fan games(including the one guising themselves as originals(on the hub, anyway.) are rips.
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Oh I agree. Falacy's was more... organized and better efficient when I took a glance at Bleach : Eternity to see what the hub-bub was about.
I would also like to add on to your post and mention that if someone were to use an existing source (rip), to complete what is already there and don't start adding anything until the current build is completed. A lot of these games are incredibly petty when it comes to this. A bunch of icons don't match up with players, there's times where Quests have no achievable end because of a flawed design, content that is shown in the game isn't obtainable/useable since it's in, but not fully finished/enabled and the server clearly isn't labeled Testing purposes only. And yeah, about the IPs, there's a few missing. Charmed, Harry Potter, One Piece, Resident Evil, etc. etc. Could go on for days. | |
Don't think I ever actually looked at that source.
I agree and will likely edit the post later to include that what's there should be finished/removed before adding/making your own content. | |
Thank you! I was surprised to actually have feedback instead of just the usual troll comments, especially on a topic about rips on the forums.
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Oh I understand. I found it to be the typical case of many BYOND developers. Come into BYOND, play games, want to make game of own, grab source, tinker with source, release game for x time, game dies because it's junk and someone else came out with an original game that's better, so learn DM and make original game. That's a common chain of events for a lot of people, including myself years ago.
Would I have ever gotten into learning how to program without using a source? Probably not. Would I ever use a pre-made source (excluding open-source projects that aren't rubbish) again? Absolutely not. | |
Why not just code a game from scratch, and avoid having to rewrite some other guy's code?
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That's the ultimate goal. Unfortunately people using ripped sources will never cease to happen. So, NNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH has written a good article basically saying "If you're going to rip, which I wouldn't suggest to, then at least do a good job converting the game to something that isn't junk".
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Do as you wish people c:
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Steps on what to do with rips:
1. Delete the entire project folder and the zip file you got it from. 2. Empty the recycle bin and forget that you ever downloaded a rip. 3. Go outside and punch a tree while questioning your sanity. 4. Bow and apologize to what is clearly an older and wiser organism. 5. Look for and buy professional games with similar mechanics. 6. Play the games and take notes on some of the features that you like. 7. Make organized design documents to narrow down the features you would like in your game. 8. Make a list of the core features and write pseudocode for each one. 9. Program your game, with as many code comments and descriptions as needed, and test every change. 10. Make sure that all text, names, icons, sounds, and other resources are original, look nice, and have proper cohesion. 11. Release your game, let players test for bugs, get suggestions for new features, and implement the ones you like by going back to step 7 and repeating the process. 12. Once you are satisfied with how stable and polished your game is, advertise it in specific communities that fit the same niche, and possibly also open up the source, so that others can help you. | |
Delete steps one through four and make a competing topic "Designing a Game for Professionals with Pre-existing Experience".
The end goal is always to do something original, but the vast majority(here on BYOND, anyway) prefer to have a crutch in the form of a already existing game. Sometimes it's because they want a starting point to learn from(big part of why I did it) and don't really know a better way of doing it. Sometimes they feel they don't have time to get a original project playable to enjoy time with friends/players, so they take a source and slowly alter it. No matter the reason, it's not going to stop. Some people hide it better, but not really anyone who does it knows what they're doing. I'm hoping, by providing a "guide" for this, to at least improve the quality of the situation. | |
Better yet, if you want a rip, pay an experienced Byond coder to code a game for you.
You will have to take a loan from the bank, and your credit will be shot, but you will have an original source to leech and profit from. WIN! | |
So you want to take extremely boring rips, improve their code on the inside, and just hope they turn into something better? That's not really a good idea, but if you are going to edit someone else's game, then it should at least be kind of fun. You could at least work with some actual open sources from real developers, like Forum_account's demos, or Yut Put's many games.
Anyway, who do you think is even going to read this? Most of the kids who play around with rips are not nearly patient enough to read through this to see if they are doing things right. If they were patient enough, then they would have just read through the DM Guide and DM Reference, and they wouldn't have needed this kind of help. You just have to hope that one day, they will develop enough patience to see their own mistakes and understand the importance of actually writing their own code. | |
I want to take extremely low quality games spread around and guide those trying to run it into making a halfway decent piece of work.
I expect several people to find this of use, I have gotten a lot of people asking me for advice on how to develop a rip. Three people in the last two days, in fact | |
This thread conflicts with the teachings of our Nexian Harbinger Developous:
Developous wrote: There's a serious lack of original contents, so it seems. For the most part, people should think more on the lines of making less anime games, and focus on the other categories more, devising new concepts Comply. | |
I think people don't care and are going to continue making rips until Byond dies.
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I comply, I comply.
I know that we don't want rips and fan games everywhere, but(in the least) we can try to make the overall quality rise. Honestly, the fan games are the worst(usually) quality on the site. It's a big reason why people like to hate on/avoid them. If we can raise quality of these games, even if it's just a little, we've done something right. I thought about taking time out to do video tutorials on why the sources available are bad and show how to improve upon those aspects, which would be a lot more helpful than this article. I lack on free time to go through this at the moment, though. Maybe soon. @Multiverse7 Anyway, who do you think is even going to read this? Most of the kids who play around with rips are not nearly patient enough to read through this to see if they are doing things right. If they were patient enough, then they would have just read through the DM Guide and DM Reference, and they wouldn't have needed this kind of help. You just have to hope that one day, they will develop enough patience to see their own mistakes and understand the importance of actually writing their own code. A few paragraphs of advice even a novice can understand vs pages upon pages of half outdated material that they won't understand until they're more adapt with DM. | |
-Was it programmed by anyone other than Falacy?
Remove that as Falacy has shown in his projects of bad practices as well.