I was sitting down, playing a single player game on byond, and it hit me... How cool would it be to make a portable Dream Seaker (something hand held like a gameboy), and you can just put them on a game on a disk, and it can be playable? It'd be the greatest thing ever. I highly doubt this is going to happen, but it's a fun thing to think about.
-Camaro-
ID:189322
 Aug 17 2003, 4:06 pm (Edited on Aug 18 2003, 7:51 am)
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Aug 17 2003, 4:26 pm
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Scoobert
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if they would make a byond palm edition they could do it.
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What a nice idea, yeah thatd be kinda cool but wouldnt it cost DanTom a bit of money to do that?
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I'm sure it would be expensive, but I'd definitely be a buyer. In the long run it's worth it.
-Camaro- | |
LMAO i was thinking the same thing like 3-4 days ago. It hit me as i was playin one of the battle arena games.
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They're called laptops.
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Yep. They are.... except laptops run any program... Which can also cost up to $2,500. This little (read my post again), 'hand held' like thing could be the size of a game boy, and be playable off AA batteries, and also could be under $300.
-Camaro- | |
Take it from me, that kind of specialized "internet appliance" (devices, usually portables, designed to run only a few specific online programs) will always turn into a paperweight shortly after they come out.
Imagine they make a little device with a minimal OS capable of running Dream Seeker and some space for downloading games and saving some data client side and it's got a little modem or a wireless device. Since DS also has an integral browser, you could even use it as a sort of micro-surfer. Cool so far? Okay. Now imagine the next version of Dream Seeker comes out, or the next version of Internet Explorer (which DS uses for its browser), and you need an update. There'd need to be some kind of way of force-updating it. Now what happens if, because you don't use the device for a while, you get so many updates behind that you can no longer even connect with the program you have on it then? Believe it or not, that actually's happened with devices like this before. Or imagine the program on it becomes corrupt, hopelessly "pooched" as they say in tech support circles. With a regular computer that has a full OS, you could just reinstall the offending program, or if the whole OS is gone, you can wipe it out and start over. Well, with this kind of stripped-down bare bones device, there wouldn't be any way of doing such a thing... so you'd have to start adding stuff back in and before you know it, you're back to having a small laptop or a palm pilot. Then, what happens if the company which supports the BYOND service (Dantom) goes under? Not a happy thought, I admit. Well, let's say that they're just forced scale way back and no longer manage a hub. We could still run our games and publicize our own IP addresses... but these nifty little gadgets would probably all still be pointing to the hub. Even if they didn't need the hub to function... the willingness of people to buy a device that plugs into an online service depends a lot on the apparent financial future of that service. A lot of people got stuck after buying crappy devices like I-Openers and the company that ran the service went out of business or was merged out of existence. In short, it would be a lot of development in order to produce a machine that already cannot do everything a computer can do yet doesn't do anything new, that will one day become useless. | |
Hedgemistress wrote:
Now what happens if, because you don't use the device for a while, you get so many updates behind that you can no longer even connect with the program you have on it then? Yeah but thats a design flaw. Im sure that if they did do it they would make benchmark updates or something. Ie, if you have v4.6, and v8.3 is the latest, you can still download v6.0, which can be upgraded to v7.0, which in turn upgrades to v8.x. That way its always possible, it just means when you slack off you have to download more files. Alternatively you could just make it download the entire program if the update isnt compatable. Anyway, I agree hand-held BYOND is a bad idea. Only a few BYONDers would buy it, and it would get old fast. Personally Id just get a GameBoy Advance with a Flashcard and three or four carts. That way I can run GBA ROMs when Im feeling cheap, my own games, and all my GBA games. | |
I still say laptop. They might be a bit spendier, but they aren't limited to running lower-quality games than what computers are capable of now. So you can still fly around in 3D, browse the internet, program, or whatever you want while you're traveling. (You can probably emulate all the console games anyway.)
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