I feel that we can all learn a thing or two from one another. As a diverse community, we all have our ways of doing things; no two of us are the same. That's why I thought it would be fun to do some small interviews with some of the people here and learn more about them. If you'd like to volunteer as someone who would like to be interviewed, I encourage you to reply here in this thread.
I'm also interested in creating a podcast about this stuff. Not quite sure what direction I wanna take with it (have it be BYOND-oriented or on a more general scale) but it would be fun to see where things go.
The idea stemmed from when I had questions to topics I wanted to learn more about (design questions, and general thinking on projects). I didn't want to ask questions in a way that it seemed like I was asking for advice, so instead, I asked questions I needed answers for to someone else to see what their responses were. I could then compare what they had to say with what I had in mind. This approach was extremely interesting and fun to do, and in the end decided that this was a beneficial method of learning for both parties.
I basically started asking some general, objective questions you'd see on surveys. That's exactly what it was: a survey. There's an infinite number of ways to solve a problem, and I'm curious to get into the minds of individuals to see how they go about it. I could then post the results on the forums (or make the podcast series which contains the information). Lemme know what you think.
Cheers.
Questions asked:
What's the very first thing you do when you open a new project in DM?
How often do you abandon projects? Does this happen because of some outside circumstance, or is it because you've hit a wall or something?
How do you feel about the Webclient?
Do you know other programming languages besides DM? You can list up to ten.
When did you first begin using DM? How do you like it compared to other languages (if you know any)?
There's a lot of allegations saying that the community is doomed, or that we're incompetent to make anything worth "saving" BYOND. What's your take on it?
Would you consider BYOND as an engine to be oriented towards professional game design, or is it more of a hobbyist tool?
Would you recommend BYOND (as a game design engine) to friends?
Should BYOND's software be open-sourced?
How often do you use the Credits / Subscription system that BYOND has built-in?
ID:2040986
 Feb 20 2016, 11:28 am (Edited on Feb 23 2016, 4:42 pm)
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Feb 20 2016, 12:41 pm
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Ishuri
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I'm all about this kinda stuff! Hit me up on pager if you wanna discuss dets.
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I'd be up for it. Just send me a page, and I'll reply when I see it. Quick responses tend to occur on Sundays.
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I'll send you both pages to initiate things. I don't really have any scripts for this, but I always have lots of questions.
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im up to the ask just pm me on byond
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I'm up for it as well, just send me a page as well.
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sure
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No you cannot interview me. There are warrants out for my arrest, and you're probably wearing a wire.
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I'm sure interviewing a bunch of idiots will make for some great academic reads.
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After doing some thinking, I thought it would be a lot easier for me to post the questions here on the thread. If you'd like to reply to the post publicly, simply quote the post and append your answer to it. If you'd like to do it privately, use the same format but send it to my pager. This will definitely make things a lot less of a hassle.
Let's start off shall we? What's the very first thing you do when you open a new project in DM? | |
Mr_Goober wrote:
What's the very first thing you do when you open a new project in DM? Make coffee, because this will be a very long day. | |
Mr_Goober wrote:
What's the very first thing you do when you open a new project in DM? Hmm, one of two things depending on the project. If applicable I copy over a few things from another of my projects such as chat functions, or movement handling. If not, I simply get all the basic settings laid out such as view size, default step size, default turf, maybe a basic skin; just the essentials for initial creation and testing really. | |
@SSX:
Oh man I get you. @Toddab: Ah yeah I do that a lot too. I guess a lot of developers have their own pocket knives they've built up from working on other projects, and it makes more sense to not have to rewrite them. I guess in some cases libraries cut the workload significantly, though for me personally I haven't really seen the need for me to publish any, as I just copy and paste code form other projects instead. | |
Here's another to keep you busy. Try to be as detailed as you can about your answers.
How often do you abandon projects? Does this happen because of some outside circumstance, or is it because you've hit a wall or something? | |
Mr_Goober wrote:
What's the very first thing you do when you open a new project in DM? I usually create all the files I know I will need, so Procs.dm, NPCs.dm, Variables.dm, Frog.dmi, so on and so forth. Sometimes I'll even go in as I'm making each file and just type some stuff I know I use in most games, i.e. after I make the Variables file I'll go ahead and make vars for health, dmg, gold, exp, etc. | |
the very first thing i do when i open a new project in dm is come up with something to do and think for hours of time lol
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i dont abandon projects because i only worked on one project which is shoot but i might just because my iconers dont icon for me anymore they are just plain lazy lol
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Yeah, I definitely think that's true. I rarely ever use libraries, but I also rarely make something I cannot use code from my other projects in. In fact, as I make more projects I find creation growing faster as there's more I can copy and modify.
Mr_Goober wrote: How often do you abandon projects? Does this happen because of some outside circumstance, or is it because you've hit a wall or something? I guess that depends on what you consider abandoned. I have a lot of projects on back burner to be continued sometime in the future, and others I've yet to start, but I'll get to them all with time. Now as far as ones I started on, but then stopped and do not intend to return to... Well, that has only happened a few times. Primarily three times that I recall. The first was because it was a DBZ fan game, and I realized I wanted to do something more original that I could potentially earn income from. The second was a simple space game I'd started on inspired by Galaga, but as I worked on it I got bored, and I struggled to make that type of art and such work the way I wanted back then. The third was something I barely began, and it was more of a test than anything. I wanted to see how feasible a racing game sort of like Mario Kart might be in BYOND using pixel movement, but I quickly realized it would take a great deal of time and work to even test at the time. I think that's become more feasible now, but I still question how well it could be done, and it's just not something I'm interested in anymore. | |
Mr_Goober wrote:
How often do you abandon projects? Does this happen because of some outside circumstance, or is it because you've hit a wall or something? I've rarely started or worked on projects that are really "abandonable" - I've mostly written demos/tutorials/libraries. The few projects that I've worked on have been abandoned mostly because of time. I go to school full-time and work for the University whenever I'm not in class. Furthermore, I've only really abandoned DBRP - which, I stopped caring about because of it's community...of not very smart people. | |