Part 2.1 (and possibly 2.2 -- I can't remember) were in the works. I was writing them in a hidden subsection of my blog forums. Which are for the time being are presently unavailable.

The plan I had initially was to release the thing in stages. But I realised I was focusing less on interface work and more on an actual character creation. Which wasn't my goal.

I think part 2.1 was getting rid of the ridiculous amounts of input() creation systems that were everywhere and replace them with a single window, similar to this (I was hoping to find an old screenshot of a much, much better interface I'd made for a game I'd long since abandoned, but that's all I could find).

Part 2.2 was going to concentrate on the load screen. Replacing the normal "Select your saved character" input screen that normally pops up with something similar to this (same story as above, I seem to have lost my good screenshots D=).

The entire thing is pretty much done via winget() (and temporarily loading the savefiles to get user icon information to generated the preview avatar), and wouldn't be that hard to pick-up with a bit of elbow work and asking a few people politely how you'd go about it. Several people already have all of this stuff in place now anyway. Back when I began this "series", the interface was being largely ignored, with only minor edits to the default being made (which was bugging me, a lot).

Sorry guys/girls, but I've become an adult and work full time now. =(

Gi Money wrote:

Nice article, really inspiring and i honestly think this should be publicly visible to all new game designers introduced into byond, like in the 'BYOND 101' or 'BYOND Whitepaper' sections, but theres only a small issue when one of your arguments:

I wouldn't say it'd be mandatory reading for all newcomers. But anyone just getting into the interface might find it a little useful, perhaps.

Now although i agree that most people get "turned off" by the lack of aesthetics in designs like this, bear in mind that customized skins were not introduced until 4.0 before which byond still had an impressive fan base(Players, Games, Designers) meaning people were still drawn into it despite that old tabs and what not layout.

I got my hands on 4.0 back in 2007. As an early private beta tester. So by the time I'd written this, I'd been working with it for a while.

This post was made in 2010. Three years after the interface stuff had found it's way into public domain. There really was no excuse for developers not trying to use it to it's full potential at the time (and there's no excuse for active developers today not doing -something- with it). The default interface is ugly, but it needs to be to cater to the legacy games.

Quite frankly im not really sure what my point is ;P but i felt old school byond needed a little back up XD...

Old school BYOND? Reppin' 2003 here mate. ;)

I'm a couple years late, Tib but I have a question.

I've done all of this, compiled it, everything works great.
But when I execute my game, I do get the popup window, but it's completely blank.
It's not the Input/Output window, because there is no option for input or output.
And my splash window is all set with the image and buttons.
I just can't figure it out.