Moonlight Memento wrote:

They've been kind with WHAT? Forcing us to pay 24$ for a feature that was free? There was NO need for that. Listing being members only was enough. Let alone RAISING THE PRICE.

Oh wait, I'm going against the hive mind, I must just be whining as usual according to you geniuses. Because hey, a hive mind knows more than ANYONE, right?

You are whining.

They're now charging you for something THEY create and THEY host to use with software they allow you FREE use while they work to give you it all.

The fact stands that it's not YOUR platform, it is theirs. You do not pay the upkeep for BYOND (because you're too busy whining about the cost of a membership and its features), nor do you run the business, so at the end of the day, what you say DOES NOT MATTER. Get it through your head.

You can cry all day about being charged for one feature, but nobody really gives a crap. It's done, and it's going to stay how it was changed to be.

Game over, you still lose, whether you reply again or not.

Devourer Of Souls wrote:

One thing I'm curious about is why the forum link from the hub info was removed. I understand that hubs feature a discussion tab now, and the feature/bug tracker is very useful, but I'd still appreciate the option to point people to my own forum instead.

Agreeing with this.

I absolutely love it all!

Sure, it's different but it's a helluva lot cleaner and as you guys planned, "centralized". Looks great. Keep it up, guys.
Also, thanks for fixing my login issue, Tom.

EDIT: Were featured games removed?

I am sorry to burst your little bubble, Memento, but in no way is any part of the BYOND website or software some divine right of yours. It is a privilege. I don't care what reasoning Tom has behind doing anything. It's his website. Not yours.

I think this goes without saying, but if my posts are being so "offensive" they get deleted, why are their posts not?

You need to spend 24$ to have a shot at advertising. Which, around here, rarely works.

24$ you aren't going to make back either. If I have to spend money to make my project useful I'd rather it be in a powerful engine.

Moonlight Memento wrote:

"Your logic is flawed. BYOND hubs are not a requirement for advertisement. As others have mentioned, you can do this all on your own website. Now that a Flash client is going to be available, you could technically have people playing your games without even knowing exactly what BYOND is. At least some percentage of BYOND gamers might not even know what a BYOND hub is.

You do not need the BYOND hub to make a successful game."

A Flash player? That will likely require some Flash knowledge. Oh yeah. It also requires me wanting to make my game browser-based, hoping it works with all browsers... yeaaah.

No, it will not require knowledge of flash. And since flash is a browser plugin, it does not require you to do anything to make it work across browsers.

Keep going though, your ignorance is really welcome here.

It was free for 11 years. Why did it need to become pay to use?

To be sustainable.

Again, because you people can't read: To market a product, you don't take features away from the FREE version of the product and tack it onto the paid one. That's not marketing.

Could you please let me know where you received your degree in marketing? What do you know about how to market a product? Have you ever run a business with a client base the size of BYOND? Have you analyzed the risk/reward in expanding that client base?

Advertising a BYOND game? Hardly. I have to advertise the software, and the annoying methods of joining without the hub... at that point, get something that doesn't look like complete spyware and takes forever to play one game. Like the whole Open Location bull.

Actually you don't, but again, you're not only ignorant, you're too lazy to do any research. BYOND allows you to create a self extracting archive that will autojoin to any location you would like, as a guest, even. With this, you can disable client authentication and you don't even need BYOND keys. There is no 'install BYOND, make a key, open the pager, go to open location, type an address', there is only 'Make your game installer, distribute'.

Here is it again for people who can't read.
To market a product, you don't take features away from the FREE version of the product and tack it onto the paid one. That's not marketing.

Ever consider that you are the one being thick here?

Moonlight Memento wrote:

So you mean with all the memberships, BYOND was actually going downhill? Pretty different from Tom's say just a year ago.

The installer still requires BYOND to be or to get installed. It's wholly pointless. Until that can be bypassed it's not good at all. Game Maker can do it, why can't BYOND? Maybe that would be a FEATURE people would want to PAY for.

Here's a thought... the installer... uh... installs uh... hmm... what do installers do...


Oh, right. The installer installs your game and the portable BYOND, seamlessly and without the user even knowing, at the same time. I know, it's hard to comprehend, but technology is pretty amazing these days. Then, your game executable, made with Dream Maker's packaging tool, will auto connect to the location of your choice when run.

I know you need the help, so let's reiterate:
Installer installs everything the user needs seamlessly, just like any other program or game.
When game is run, the client opens and does not prompt for a "BYOND login". Your game has complete control.

So were featured games removed altogether?
Seems like a feature that will be missed.

SuperAntx wrote:

Actually BYOND's Make EXE function is pretty broken and I've always been quite vocal about it. BYOND isn't able to create a single, stand-alone executable for your game. Instead it creates an online installer pointed at your hub page. You can use certain commands to execute a local dmb, but depending on whether or not the user has BYOND installed the game will not even boot because of issues with the pager. Don't forget even with the portable version of BYOND you're still dealing with a bunch of files rather than a single executable.

I was referring to the portable version of BYOND, and I fail to understand why having "a bunch of files rather than a single executable" is a problem. When was the last time you saw a game run out of a single executable? Programs have dependencies. Hell, half of the games on Steam install entirely different versions of the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime environment!

Use the make exe functionality, the portable version of BYOND, like done in this post, and then wrap it all in an NSIS installer and you're good to go. Would it be cool if BYOND integrated with NSIS or something like it, sure, but it's not a difficult thing to do yourself. Let's no cater to the lowest common denominator, here.

SuperAntx wrote:

From what I understand players using the Flash client will be forced to look at ads while our games load. It's also going to be housed here on the BYOND website exclusively, essentially making it a paid-only feature related to hub entries.

That's all still up in the air. We'll probably have the Flash games on the site at first, but we definitely have plans to expand off site since one of the points to all this is to allow BYOND games to be played from portals like Kongregate and even Facebook.

Also, we're working on a much better standalone system for games. We just have to make sure we don't get cut out of the equation entirely.