Warmest end-of-summer greetings, BYONDers! I hope this edition of Within BYOND finds you well. In the time between the last edition of Within BYOND and now, I've proposed to my now-fiancé (woo!), signed the paperwork for a new house, and have played the ever-living crap out of Baldur's Gate 3. What have y'all been doing this summer? Leave a comment below and fill me in!
I'll admit that my time spent dedicated to Within BYOND has been few and far between lately. This edition comes after the longest break I've given it so far. Fear not, though, dear reader: I've had enough time to keep tabs on all of your beloved projects, and I plan to give them their time in the spotlight today. In addition, I'm going to commit to releasing at least one edition of Within BYOND every 2 months. So sit back, relax, grab a cold beverage of your choosing, and join me as we dive into the work of BYOND's finest.
BYOND Development
New PC Fundraiser: Dear readers, our beloved BYOND Developer Lummox JR is currently raising funds for a new PC. His current rig's starting to lose its gray hair, and if the big ticket items are to see the light of day (WebView2, and afterwords, some much needed website work) then his PC is going to need a full replacement. Lummox JR posted the fundraising link into the BYONDiscord and another SS13 Discord server, coderbus, the night of August 16th and within 12 hours had met his goal of $2,500. However, if we wanted to show our benevolent overlord just a bit more love, you can pitch in on this Indiegogo listing so Lummox JR can finally afford a decent office chair, too! As a BYONDer eagerly looking forward to the WebView2 upgrade, I personally thank all of you who contributed or will contribute!
Where we last left Lummox JR, he was continuing to test threaded sendmaps and fixing issues as they arose. After some hairs were thinned and issues were fixed, the issues with sendmaps threading were 99.9% resolved, and they moved onto Linux testing. Well, sort of. As it turns out, being a non-Linux developer trying to use Linux is a bit of a pain in the rear. Nevertheless, Lummox JR perservered, and the Linux test builds proved to be mostly issue-free. After some thought, Lummox JR decided to dive into a "BYONDapi" project, which had to endure a complete rethink after discovery that an initial approach would not be portable. In any case, Lummox JR has big plans for BYONDapi, including the ability for external programs to interface directly with BYOND's internal functionality for things like icons and its color routines, and he continues to develop it to this day. Speaking of more recent changes, Lummox JR has fully comitted to implementing a dark mode in Dream Maker, and has made significant progress on that front. There was even a celebratory "Ooh! Ooh! I did it!" in the BYONDiscord, so look forward to making your whole development environment much darker in the near term, folks!
BYOND Creators
Continuing the "BYOND Creators" idea from my last edition of Within BYOND, I wanted to take a moment to spotlight what Grind Knight's community has been up to. If you're unfamiliar, Grind Knight's community is one that aims to popularize BYOND in a way that's accessible to the fledgling developer through various media sources that provide potential reach outside the norm. In my opinion, their hallmark video is this step-by-step "get started" guide, which details setting up a new BYOND environment, getting started with BYOND in Visual Studio Code, as well as some simple introductory lessons on using BYOND's built-in menus and configuring simple player mob types. More recently, a simple introduction to passing proc arguments was released, as was a guide on an inventory system with stacking item logic. Grind Knight's team is devoted to empowering a newfound game developer with the tools they need to get out there and makgam, so I seriously consider checking out their YouTube channel and Discord Server if you've always felt like getting started but never quite knew how!
BYOND Games
Our resident lighting master Taitz, also known as Taeivas, has brewed up a new demo that explains how to generate icons using normal maps. The way Taeivas works this magic is to grab an initial set of "diffuse" and "normal" icons. A diffuse map defines the base color, and determines how light will react to it when subjected to it. A normal is a crucial requirement that indicates, in a color space, the direction a surface is facing at a given point, and supplies the surface structure. From there, "positive" and "negative" spaces are split out, which combined represent the full array of surface faces, represented as RGB colors. Then, light is applied into the positive and negative spaces. Brighter light is applied to the positive space and darker light is applied to the negative space. We then perform "rendering", which takes our "diffuse" map from before and combines it with illumination, simulating light on its surface to create a rendered image, beautifully portraying light being cast onto an object. If you're interested in playing with the project, check out the GitHub repository to see the code in action!
Devourer of Souls is still hard at work on Sigrogana Legend 2! The Arbalest rework is live, which breathes life into everyone's favorite promoted Archer class. It features a score of updated skills and even some new ones, all centered around ranged chain weaponry. Most recently, as of a few days ago, Devourer of Souls released another update, which allows players to place down props for RP purposes. Attack regalia was also added, which allows you to add an attack style customization to a weapon that'll change the way it animates when attacking. Further, a bunch of text-based written items in the game can now support CSS, so you can really spruce up your own written items. Devourer of Souls has a bunch more on his plate and big plans for the future, so if you're in an RP mood, do feel free to check out Sigrogana Legend 2!
Chance continues to keep Meranthe up to snuff. The forum posts detail inventory improvements, giving each equippable slot its own dedicated space, as well as adding hovertext to menu item. A fancy new minimap has been added which highlights key locations for characters, quest NPCs, enemies, and others. A large number of updates to farming were implemented, as well as a redesign to The Faceless. There's also been a number of new event spells for DMs to use, including allowing the boss to spawn orbs of destruction and summon their own minions. Overall, quite a nice list of improvements!
Crazah released what he's been doing with trace/ALTER lately, and it's quite a big list of interesting additions! First and foremost, Crazah has fully integrated his NPCs with GPT3, which means you can have deep and meaningful discussions with NPC characters, and experience a wide range of emotional responses depending upon who you're speaking to (which does include ALTERs!) Additionally, NPC AI has been improved to be location-aware and more properly recognize when and when not to engage with players. AI will also immediately engage when ALTERs spawn, further adding to the depth of the world, and making it feel much more alive. Cybernetics and prosthetics have been added, allowing visitors to Neuromancers to deck out their characters in advanced weaponry! Last, but certainly not least, Crazah has implemented a tutorial system called "SABLE", which is an interactive and fully voiced tutorial that explains the beginning aspects of the game to brand new players. If you're interested, you can check out a video that showcases it here!
