A limited version of BYOND would be nice, or at least some additions for BYOND.
First, there needs to be some kind of override for BYOND so it can run on USB sticks without even attempting to mess with the machine. I installed BYOND on a school machine a few hours ago and that machine immediately complained about "important Windows XP files" being overwritten and wanted the Windows XP SP3 DVD -- which I didn't have on me at the time.
So my suggestion for that one is to have a .zip file containing the files necessary to run BYOND.
Second it should be possible to avoid BYOND writing to the system registry (or attempting to) whenever possible. A text file in the same directory as BYOND with simple configuration options (where is the config. directory and where is the BYOND directory?) should be there so it can override the use of the registry.
Third, it may be beneficial for schools if permissions can be set up in BYOND: this can be used to prevent students from running BYOND games with trusted privileges, connecting to the BYOND Hub etc.
In the case of not being permitted to connect to the BYOND hub, this can have a significant advantage for local networks such as in schools. Instead of giving you a login screen, BYOND will automatically log you in but will not connect to the BYOND Hub. Your BYOND key is no longer your BYOND key but actually the username with which you are logged into the computer. This allows schools to maintain who is who by their student ID rather than their BYOND key, which could be anything.
Of course this is very limited. If BYOND is in "local mode", it will only allow connections to local servers and it will attempt to authenticate with the username as key. Alternatively instead of the username one could set it up to make your key the local IP from which you are connecting from, in the event that usernames aren't that unique.
The permission system could be cooked into a BYOND configuration file. BYOND has no standard way to modify this file however the arguments are listed in a help file nearby.
The idea is that the permissions can be set up and then the file can be locked to administrators: only admins can mess about with the file and alter the permissions.
ID:260631
 Sep 19 2008, 6:00 am
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I agree completely. This could be very helpful for school situations if I could just store everything on a flash drive. I third this.
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I support this, although, I can run byond just fine off of my flash drive. All I have to do is browse to the "bin" folder for dream maker to run. (if that solves your problem AD.)
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DivineTraveller wrote:
I support this, although, I can run byond just fine off of my flash drive. All I have to do is browse to the "bin" folder for dream maker to run. (if that solves your problem AD.) they are asking for a version that won't have to be installed initially, thus not leaving a registry file in the computer. You know like the thing that appears in the "Add/Remove" Programs, and other data that wouldn't be in the flash drive. | |
eh, I sucked it up for a few months and just did it that way. if need be, talk to a school tech to get it installed somewhere in the drive.
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DivineTraveller wrote:
I support this, although, I can run byond just fine off of my flash drive. All I have to do is browse to the "bin" folder for dream maker to run. (if that solves your problem AD.) DreamMaker, yes. That will run. The BYOND Pager? First it asks you to point to the BYOND directory, then it reads/writes from/to the registry for the profile directory. By "BYOND Lite" I don't mean 3.5. I mean a version of 4.0 that does not require installation but uses a .txt/.ini file to get it's information, and has only one global profile (directory defined in .ini). And the second idea is the whole "permissions" thing. | |
There was a zip version where I had it where before I had it on my flash drive, and I didn't have to go through any installations, becasue everything required was on in that zip, without any needed registry additions, system file additions or anything on the computer's HD itself.
Having a Standalone version of byond was very handy.
In fact it was 1 exe file only, and then when that 1 exe was ran, it just created the folders in the directory that the exe was in for things like hub cashe/developer files/usr key info. No files went anywhere else. It all stuck into one folder which was very handy for School situations.