Sep 19 2016, 7:54 pm
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Zagros5000
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Yea fangames are horrible m8 kill anyone who makes/plays them
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It's that kind of thinking that made so many people leave. I think it has more to do with the fact that BYOND appealed to a niche that sort of dried up because of more powerful tools maturing and becoming more accessible. Not necessarily that everyone got "chased away". People leave development communities regularly. A community starts to die when the new members coming in do so slower than old members leave. 1) What draws new members to the software? Seeing what it can do. 2) What does BYOND do? It helps you make multiplayer games. 3) How do people see what multiplayer games do? They play them. 4) How do we get people playing multiplayer games made with BYOND? Make and advertise games that appeal to a wider audience. It's not exactly rocket science. | |
This thread is dumb.
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That's how you get an audience, but how will that help you keep the audience you get? Sooner or later, no matter how fun your game is, players are going to want to play other games as well. If games can cooperate and agree to advertise each other, players can switch between the games that are in the loop, and the audience is far more likely to stay right where you want it. If players can be persuaded to stay, the community will grow over time. You have to see the bigger picture. The world is bigger than any little game you make.
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If games can cooperate and agree to advertise each other, players can switch between the games that are in the loop, and the audience is far more likely to stay right where you want it. Carts and horses aren't put where they are arbitrarily. This is just more "BYOND should do all the work for you." again. I change my mind. I agree with Kumorii. | |
A good programmer strives for automation.
Which of these is a more effective strategy? Your audience:  What it could be:  | |
For an example, we can use the ?TopicData portion of the BYOND address format (byond://address:port?TopicData) to track where players are coming from or going by overriding client/New() and client/Topic(). The ?TopicData portion would need to contain the name and address of the server that sent it, and possibly names and addresses of servers connected to before that one, in some kind of special format. This would allow us to give some kind of credit to servers that link to our servers. This could be used to link back to the servers that link to our games the most. When other games adopt the same system, it will automatically provide players with the most relevant connections between servers.
To have something to start with, you could check which games your players like the most, and link to those. Also, when a player uses a byond:// address in chat or anywhere else, you would parse it to make sure that the current server's name and address are appended to it. As with any user input, it would need to be moderated to prevent links to bad or irrelevant servers. In theory, other games would join in when they see that your game can provide them with advertising. | |
Lummox JR wrote:
The way I see it is, if your passions are pushing you toward a fan project, you should look at what aspects of that are driving your passion. Why are you a fan? What is it about it that you like? If you can look at your love of the material in depth and puzzle out what makes you love it so much, you can find your passion in those elements and tropes, which are free for anyone to use, rather than in the whole that belongs to somebody else. This even applies to settings and characters within a franchise. Don't write a Star Wars fangame because you love Boba Fett; write a sci-fi game where characters like Boba Fett can thrive. Look at why you like specific characters. The deeper you look, the more you'll learn. I have to agree quite a bit with this. There were some fan games years ago (before the 'great purge') that I quite enjoyed playing, and you know what? I never even 'really' watched the franchises that they were about, I enjoyed the concepts that they had, skill systems, special effects, genre themes and the general game play. I've seen some terrible, and also very amazing and complex fan games made with Byond, and I often think to myself, if only the developers took their coding and artwork capabilities and developed their own, original product. If you have the skills to recreate Pokemon from the ground up for example including all systems and artwork, you have the ability to create a original product as well that people would love and 'pay' to play. I also think part of the problem with Byond is that there aren't any professional grade developers using it really. I don't mean AAA studios by any means, but an actual indie game studio that goes "Hey, this tool looks useful, we're going to make our game with this product." There's quite a few that have made very nice RPG franchises with RPG Maker for example. Additionally, the few developers that have made commercial games with Byond have disconnected themselves from the engine as much as possible, Nestalgia and Epoch for example. Nothing against Yut Put but I was a little disappointed to not see any mention of Byond on the Steam page / his own 'game studio' site for the game. I personally would have at least mentioned it somewhere. | |
There actually never was a great purge; the site simply got organized differently. A few DMCA notices have been received here and there, the first of them being the biggest (covering about 20 hub entries, one of which was bogus on their part and they rescinded the takedown for it).
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Lummox JR wrote:
There actually never was a great purge; the site simply got organized differently. A few DMCA notices have been received here and there, the first of them being the biggest (covering about 20 hub entries, one of which was bogus on their part and they rescinded the takedown for it). yea I remember that. Draggin Ballz 4k got hit | |
Drakemoore wrote:
I also think part of the problem with Byond is that there aren't any professional grade developers using it really. I don't mean AAA studios by any means, but an actual indie game studio that goes "Hey, this tool looks useful, we're going to make our game with this product." There's quite a few that have made very nice RPG franchises with RPG Maker for example. As it stands no one is going to come to BYOND and take it seriously. This isn't because we need to make the font fancier on the download page or write some more paragraphs on "what BYOND do". Obviously the site can be improved and eventually somewhere down the line if things do pick up, there will be a revamp but that's not the big issue. Part of the reason I disagree with Fug's "hobbyist/just let the horrid fan-games run rampant" stance is because if you want BYOND to succeed, you have to attempt to create a site where people like this feel alienated and people like this feel right at home. Instead what we have is the exact opposite. The people who have all the potential are the same ones, who as you pointed out, want to distance themselves from the site and it's been that way for several years. When you have a user like Yut Put saying they feel "holed up", or Silk complaining about fan-game kiddies coming into his game spamming it, that's a huge problem. It speaks volumes about how little interest in game development there is on this... game development site. I completely understand that not everyone on this site wants to be the next Notch. However, if the next Notch emerges from BYOND, people will have no choice but to recognize this engine as something to consider using for serious game development and that won't happen when our most productive and promising users consistently point out this environment doesn't benefit them in the slightest. Anyone who knew me back years ago before all the frog memes and shit will tell you I was making games. My art and programming needed to be improved, but I was getting things done. Out of like, the 3 or 4 people that regularly assisted me, only one of them still seems to lurk the forums and that's Calus CoRPS. I probably wouldn't have ever finished jackshit if it wasn't for him showing me how to program certain features into my game. The point is, Yut and I share a common complaint and that is when we make games, nobody on BYOND plays them and it's funny because down through the years, every time one of these "THIS IS HOW YOU SAVE BYOND!" threads pops up, we get people emerging out of the woodwork voicing their opinion on what will benefit the site yet leading up to the release of the last project I made on this site, I made SEVERAL blog posts attempting to generate interest and get feedback and even tried to get a tournament going and do you how many people responded? 3. Even after seeing those efforts get ignored, I made one last ditch effort to help this community by offering to create entire games for people. I had went into DM and made modular environments ( one for an rpg, rts, round-based action game and a shooter ) and my price was something ridiculously low like $50 or some shit because I didn't even care about the money, I just wanted people to pay so I knew they were serious about it. I only got two responses and after talking to both of them they changed their mind and then eventually left the site. At that point, I just said "fuck it" and that's when I became popular as the "guy who writes 'narto frog'" on everyone's blog. I'm not saying people are obligated to play my games. Not saying they're obligated to pay for my services. What I'm saying is, everybody wants to help BYOND but they never do. Hell, they're even too lazy to go assist the one or two people that ARE trying to do something to help BYOND. People like Fug will tell you this site is so incredibly unfair to fan-game owners but in reality, that isn't the case. The fan-game owners have it easy. This site is frustrating for people like me who at one point had a legitimate interest in making something. That's why those users vanish from the site. The few people that I used to have thought-provoking game design discussions with that I used to look up to as mentors don't bother coming to this site anymore and the fact that those people ran away but the whiny fan-game kiddies are still here is depressing. Yut is a rare exception to that case and probably the only thing keeping him here is the fact that he doesn't want to bother learning another engine. I think it at this point, BYOND is like a cancer patient. We could've nipped this community-related issue in the bud years ago but instead we sat around watching the cancer spread and now it's at the point where we need a literal miracle from Jesus otherwise we're dead. We need good games, but there's only like 3 profitable-looking games in development right now and if for any reason those games get cancelled or just flop somehow, I don't see any comeback happening for this site. At the very least Lummox might still make enough to cover his ramen expenses but I assume when we're talking about BYOND "succeeding" we're referring to reaching a point where Dream Maker is mentioned alongside other engines ( especially when the topic is 2D engines ) and Lummox is driving a Bentley. | |
EmpirezTeam wrote:
...I don't really think the average developer here is much worse (if at all) than say, a GameMaker dev, but the community is incredibly tiny in comparison. It's not that nobody appreciates or takes the engine seriously; it's that very few know about it, and there's a bunch of good options out there already. So as always, I'd say these threads are way too negative and probably making issues out of nothing. Maybe an inviting, modern homepage would go a long way, but the current website isn't all that bad either and I doubt it does significant harm. | |
The engine itself isn't bad, it could definitely use an official showcase game / demo that is open source, fully commented, decently coded and visually appealing. The closest Byond has is the Welcome to Byond demo game and Step Byond, both of which do not compile as it currently stands, although the issues are somewhat minor. Both are also out of date in terms of style and game play in terms of general 2D gaming these days.
When I say official I don't necessarily mean that Lummox create it, but I think it'd be great if Lummux is willing to have one, or even a handful of officially hosted game demos that both show off the engine's potential and are also dual purpose in that they help to show the inner workings of DM to beginners. These demo(s) could be shown prominently on the home page and be optionally included in the Dream Maker, they'd also need to be maintained. | |
EmpirezTeam wrote:
Drakemoore wrote: Now hold on. I can see your fustration, but let me ask you something I didn't see you mention. If you made these games, did you ever advertise it OUTSIDE of BYOND? I see many fan-game creators AND original game content creators not doing this, then complain that no one plays their game. I'm being serious. People need to stop relying on BYOND for advertising their game. That's the DEVELOPER'S job. So, if you did advertise outside of BYOND (which is acceptable because you said it was original) then I will shut up. However, if not, then that's your own fault for not getting players, and relying on BYOND's ass backwards weeb community to provide that for you. | |
I talked about that extensively in discord a bit. For example, Epoch I searched around extensively, I didn't see it mentioned on Reddit or any other sites where it could have been discussed among gamers that aren't from the Byond crowd. You can't rely on a game to make it big or even get popular if you only rely on the small community here. The gaming community globally is massive in comparison, Byond's community is merely a drop in the bucket.
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If that is the case, it proves my point even further. As a developer, you are the entrepreneur. You need to convince people to buy your game. It's business 101. You need to communicate with people outside of BYOND and get shit started. Getting your game on Steam is fine and dandy, but without advertising (hell, like you said, a forum post or reddit post) then the game won't go anywhere.
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Yut did extensive marketing for epoch. Unfortunately reddit has policies againsr self promotion, and fee indie game review sites even bothered to redeem the reviewer keys.
Epoch suffered from some dealbreaking problems at lauch, and yut learned a ton from it in the process. | |
Last time I checked ( which was a very long time ago ) reddit only frowned upon self-promotion if you like, solely used your account for self-promotion. If you were a regular contributor of whatever subreddit you were posting to and say, only 1 out of every 20 posts you make was about yourself, they didn't mind. If it has gotten even more strict since then, that is pretty lame.
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