Ratzy wrote:
Falacys nature is close to a trollI blame my father =P makes games use a lot more CPU than most other people, programs so only he can understand itI hope I don't do those things =o Making my projects use minimal CPU is one of my primary focuses, and I try to write my programming so that it is not only almost as easy to read as plain English, but even easier to modify/augment. | |
I don't know about the CPU, but i'll say you make your code VERY condensed o.o
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Teka123 wrote:
but I'll say you make your code VERY condensed o.o THIS IS MADNESS. Well, that's true actually, but it shouldn't be condensation at the loss of details/understandability, just to remove redundant code, in your case, like turning your chest looting code into a single procedure instead of having nearly identical code on every chest =P This, again, also makes it easier to actually modify/augment the code. To change the contents of a chest, you literally just have to change the contents of that chest, instead of having to rewrite the code that gives you specific loots. And for things like marking which chests are already opened, this is all handled in one place for all chests. | |
Falacy wrote:
Games provide low quality limited graphics, focusing on chat based RP instead of laggy tile based gameplay, make use of verbs and stat panels to drive what little gameplay there is, and have generally unresponsive controls. Practically every one of those issues could be fixed by BYOND making changes to their engine, instead of expecting the developers to work far outside the standard operating protocols that BYOND provides them. While that's what BYOND handles best it's certainly capable of more, even in its current state. Technically, there's nothing stopping people from making an RTS game on par with Warcraft 2 (simple mouse/keyboard input, tile-based maps and movement). BYOND's potential is certainly limited by missing or buggy features but most people aren't using what BYOND does provide to its potential either. BYOND doesn't have many users who are capable of using it to make a decent game (that's not to say that all users are idiots, just that the few good users often lack time, patience, and game ideas). The BYOND staff does nothing to draw in good users. They rely on BYOND games to bring in new users and, as a result, most users who join BYOND have zero programming and game development experience. It's like they expected to attract a great community without trying and are now bummed that it didn't work out. My guess is that it's just easier for the BYOND staff if they have bad users. When most of their users are making simple RP/chat games, maptext is a very impressive feature. If BYOND had a lot of good users making high quality games, they'd have to add more significant features than that. Quickly? It took nearly a decade for this to get implemented. I just meant the development time. The fact that they could knock out a non-trivial feature in a couple of weeks means that for the other features that drag on and on, they can't be trying that hard. Many BYOND users want to make a game just so they can be an admin and have a player base to police. The BYOND staff often seems to behave the same way. They often put more effort into forum moderation than into BYOND's development. I'm not sure what would get the BYOND staff to focus on improving BYOND. I think I've tried everything. | |
Let's not forget there's only 2 members of the Byond team and one is more the idea guy while the other is the developer, Also Lummox has been ill recently, and not to mention how many bugs where created with the site update.
Byond needs more software developers, it's not easy on poor lummox. | |
Forum_account wrote:
there's nothing stopping people from making an RTS game on par with Warcraft 2 (simple mouse/keyboard input, tile-based maps and movement).lol So you can make something with BYOND today, that is on par with something that came out in 1995? What an endorsement =P I've never actually played Warcraft 2, so I can't consider how legit such a project in BYOND would even be. BYOND's potential is certainly limited by missing or buggy features but most people aren't using what BYOND does provide to its potential either.The problem is that it doesn't handle a lot of the most basic features for creating a good game, primarily HUD related features. Its support for macros before 4.0 (which granted was a long time ago) was barely sufficient, but even now is less than respectable. The default keys provided are wonky, and you can only effectively press a single one of them at a time. It also doesn't handle more complex, though just as essential features like drawing lines/circles, and more importantly, making such elements physically interact with the game/world. Even BYOND's map editor doesn't have such features (no less including them in an actual game), and is less advanced than MS Paint in almost every way... When most of their users are making simple RP/chat games, maptext is a very impressive feature. If BYOND had a lot of good users making high quality games, they'd have to add more significant features than that.This feature may or may not be "impressive", but it is definitely something that is essential to game design, and a bit ridiculous that it hasn't been implemented before now. Many BYOND users want to make a game just so they can be an admin and have a player base to police. The BYOND staff often seems to behave the same way. They often put more effort into forum moderation than into BYOND's development."When you shine, we shine" =P I'm not sure what would get the BYOND staff to focus on improving BYOND. I think I've tried everything.You could join my riot squad, it seems to be the most/only effective method =P Ratzy wrote: Byond needs more software developers, it's not easy on poor lummox.Lummox is supposedly a full time employee, meaning he should be putting in 40 hours of work a week. Assuming that as the case, the amount of things that get done around here are pathetic. And though Lummox may not get much done, he does at least seem to have the best intentions, which is less than I can say for Tom. | |
I'm not sure what would get the BYOND staff to focus on improving BYOND. I think I've tried everything. IF we went back to my proposal at a reward for the best game of the year, an actual substantial award. Would definitely attract in better developers and push BYOND forward. | |
Cubanbling wrote:
IF we went back to my proposal at a reward for the best game of the year, an actual substantial award. Would definitely attract in better developers and push BYOND forward.I'm still not sure what you would even base this reward on. A year is also a very long time to only offer a single reward through. A monthly reward would probably be better and more inspiring. A big problem around BYOND is that there are very few competent people, and that none of these people work together. On the most basic level, a game needs at least 3 developers working in sync. One to handle the programming, one to handle the graphics, and one to handle in-depth gameplay ideas/UIs/layouts, (you could also throw in a sound guy). Most (if not all?) BYOND games only have a single developer. Attempting to handle all 3 of these concepts yourself will not only drastically slow down production times, but generally degrades the quality of all 3 (4 if you include sound) aspects of your game. Having multiple people working together (but on separate aspects) also effectively inspires each other. If your graphics guy makes some epic looking special effect, the programmer will want to work to get that implemented, or if you come up with an epic idea for some new skill, everyone will want to do their part to get it working. When you're doing all of this yourself, there is most likely going to be at least one aspect that you dislike, or you may get overwhelmed by the concept of having to handle all of it yourself, and then just decide not to do any of it. | |
I'm still not sure what you would even base this reward on. A year is also a very long time to only offer a single reward through. A monthly reward would probably be better and more inspiring. I gave several points on what you could base it on. But, if it was up to YOU what would YOU base it on, since nothing makes you happy. | |
Falacy wrote:
When you're doing all this yourself, there is most likely going to be at least one aspect that you dislike, or you may get overwhelmed by the concept of having to handle all of it yourself, and then just decide not to do any of it. I think this depends on the person, I've been developing War Brothers entirely by myself with no previous knowledge with the DM Language, and I prefer it this way. I think it's much more rewarding and you learn twice as much. It's also good not having to rely on someone else to get something done, if you want to do something, you do it. | |
The problem isn't that the BYOND staff is inactive or overburdened (they're active enough). The problem is that they're not working on the right things. They'll read the forums looking for topics to lock and posts to delete, but won't take 5 minutes to read and comment on a bug report or feature request.
Falacy wrote: [maptext] may or may not be "impressive", but it is definitely something that is essential to game design, and a bit ridiculous that it hasn't been implemented before now. It's not bad to have the feature but it couldn't have been the best way for the staff to spend development time. It's hard to use the feature in a professional-looking way. Very few commercial games use plain, 10pt Arial text on the game screen. While it's nice that they added it, it doesn't really change the fact that it's hard to make a decent game with BYOND. The problem is that it doesn't handle a lot of the most basic features for creating a good game, primarily HUD related features. Screen objects are awkward to use, partially because this is BYOND and all objects are managed by the server (and partially because screen_loc is terrible). To create a health bar you need to use many screen objects and icon states. In another platform you might just create a single image and make the client draw part of it (ex: draw 20% of the health bar image if you're at 20% health). BYOND doesn't make this super easy but it's possible for developers to work around this. What we can't work around is how buggy screen objects are. There are many cases where screen objects have terrible performance (don't update quickly, kill the game's framerate, etc.). If the BYOND staff wants to provide the basic ability to place objects on the screen and expect that users will build up the ability to create more complex on-screen elements, that's fine, but they need to make sure that the basic ability to place objects on the screen is implemented well. Its support for macros before 4.0 (which granted was a long time ago) was barely sufficient, but even now is less than respectable. The default keys provided are wonky, and you can only effectively press a single one of them at a time. Having bad default behavior is never a good thing but this is easy enough to work around. The macro editor isn't intuitive at all, but it's possible to work around that. I haven't found many problems with keyboard input but BYOND's support for mouse input is limited and unreliable. There should be a built-in way to get the exact position of the mouse cursor at any time, not just when it enters a new atom. Cubanbling wrote: IF we went back to my proposal at a reward for the best game of the year, an actual substantial award. Would definitely attract in better developers and push BYOND forward. Having more users who are good game developers would probably help to motivate the staff. But, there's a reason why BYOND doesn't have many users who are good game developers. Either game developers just aren't aware of BYOND or they don't like it. My guess is that people don't like it because they don't think it's powerful enough or simple enough. Giving out rewards won't change how people perceive that. | |
Meh. As a person seeking to develop a game it's also quite difficult to meet new people. I think due to the nature of the past, alot of people that are actually competent are reluctant to work with "new" "unproved" people, it's a large cycle that really never gets broken until you A) create a game and win some admiration or B) just quit altogether.
I've literally managed handling all of the three spots mentioned up above a few posts ago, by myself for the last two months on a medium sized project (large sized being MMORPG range). It's really a crappy position that new people get placed in, I think... it's just frustrating for everyone. I do agree though that by offering rewards for positive and constructive creations would give the community some positive momentum. When everyone is frustrated, of course they'd all be at each other's throats. | |
Maybe the few of us that care could devote some time and energy into coming up with a grading system for games, similiar to ones used by popular game development magazines?
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I think we need to find a way to advertise BYOND to places that may not know about it. We should make the Facebook page more active, and try to attract as many new people as possible. Even if we get 500 new members who don't know anything about game development, but 150 are willing to learn, that's 150 aspiring developers that may be able to contribute positively to BYOND. With those kind of numbers, we may be able to inspire the BYOND staff to start releasing more builds.
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Albro1 wrote:
I think we need to find a way to advertise BYOND to places that may not know about it. We should make the Facebook page more active, and try to attract as many new people as possible. Even if we get 500 new members who don't know anything about game development, but 150 are willing to learn, that's 150 aspiring developers that may be able to contribute positively to BYOND. With those kind of numbers, we may be able to inspire the BYOND staff to start releasing more builds. I think it would also help to get some good content for people to play. A few titles, no matter how small of each genre that are actually good examples of what Byond can offer as well. | |
I don't think the problem is only that good game developers aren't finding BYOND. Some of them must be finding BYOND and just aren't using it. That's what the problem really is - when a good game developer sees BYOND there's apparently a very small chance they'll use it to create games. Showing BYOND to more people doesn't really solve the problem (whether we draw them in by offering money or by providing games as examples of what BYOND can do). We might get a few more decent users but we'll end up making a lot of people develop bad opinions of BYOND. What we need is for BYOND to get better first, then show it to more people.
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Cubanbling wrote:
Falacy wrote: I also enjoy working alone... every project I have ever done in the last 6 years has been worked on alone... brings in alot of self satisfaction... Dariuc wrote: Maybe the few of us that care could devote some time and energy into coming up with a grading system for games, similiar to ones used by popular game development magazines? that would be pretty damn cool... I would do it... Albro1 wrote: I think we need to find a way to advertise BYOND to places that may not know about it. We should make the Facebook page more active, and try to attract as many new people as possible. Even if we get 500 new members who don't know anything about game development, but 150 are willing to learn, that's 150 aspiring developers that may be able to contribute positively to BYOND. With those kind of numbers, we may be able to inspire the BYOND staff to start releasing more builds. I do my best in trying to bring in new members.... I advertise on every forum I visit, Every chat I am involved in, Used to advertise in the schools I went to, and the places I volunteered... Hell I even taught a class at the local boys and girls club about designing games using Byond a year and a half ago... not sure how many of the kids are still around... | |
Has anyone still got the files for this sitting on their desktop? If they would be willing to share, I'm sure alot of us would be grateful
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Rapmaster wrote:
Has anyone still got the files for this sitting on their desktop? If they would be willing to share, I'm sure alot of us would be grateful http://unity3d.com/unity/download/ The subscription is online based so the software doesn't have the sub built in you are out of luck, unless someone wants to give you all their info ... | |
Yeh besides my half sarcastic reply, I am very grateful for the guy, without his tutorials and demos War Brothers wouldn't even had gotten started. To me they're the only useful tutorials here.