Stop, BYOND! Before we move forward, let's analyze one issue that truly defines why BYOND games tend to play terribly. This is not an issue for all games, but it's an issue for most. It's an issue that plagues BYOND. To me, it's the most important issue we could ever fix at this time.
First off, I will clarify that I am not belittling the fact that fixing bugs is very important. However, with every update comes a new feature or modification. Here's something that should really be looked into.

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"BYOND is 100% free, and is excellent"
-- Richard Bartle, father of the MUD.

You still see this quote on the "Get Started" page on the BYOND site. I will admit, the first time I saw that quote it actually made me more interested. I actually had no idea what MUD was. The quote and how they called him the father of it made it sound good though. For those of you who don't know, MUD stands for Multi-User-Dungeon. MUD games generally come in games completely represented by text, however they can be graphical. Deadron's Step BYOND demo is a good example of a simple graphical MUD.

MUDs are fairly simple games. They can call for text commands, clicking commands, macro commands, but there usually isn't too much action involved in them. Most of the game would be going through the dungeon and trying to solve the problems that are before you in order to continue, which would be done using those simple commands. BYOND is great for MUDs, and that's a good reason as to why that quote is there. The problem though, is that most BYOND games aren't MUDs. In fact, MUDs are in such a minority that they're hardly even noticable anymore. The majority of BYOND games are action-oriented. This is why the problem with repeat is, in my opinion, the biggest problem right now. BYOND Action, BYOND Anime, and BYOND RPG all have games in them that require the use of a smooth and easy-to-use movement system, as well as the use of multiple macros at once in order to perform certain taskes e.g. jumping while running in a sidescroller.

So, you may now be asking what the problem is exactly. You might even be asking me what exactly I really mean by "repeat". If you open up a Dream Maker environment, you can make an Interface file. When you go into that interface file, you see a section at the top for macros. When you make a new macro, you get the choice of checking the repeat box or not. What checking the repeat box does is it allows for the key pressed to repeat as long as it's pressed. Sounds like a good idea, right? Well, the way BYOND does it is why it's such a failure and such an important issue.

DarkCampainger clarified in my last post that it's not actually BYOND's repeat system. They simply use Window's default key repeat system. This sounds like an easy work-around, but this is a work-around that has jeopardized the majority of BYOND games.

There are multiple problems caused in BYOND games due to the use of the default Windows key repeat system:

1. Movement starts and stops are not as smooth. The start is the most noticable in that you move once, then it pauses for a moment before you being moving again and fully repeat properly. Just hold down a letter on your keyboard into the comment box or something and see this occurance at work. Stops are a little less noticable, but when you use while() loops for movement instead of the default Windows repeat system, you notice that you actually stop where you intend to stop. There's less of a need to actually time out how many tiles you move by tapping the key that many times. That was a huge issue in my old Megaman game which used the default key repeat. You'd actually have to figure out how many spaces were in front of you and tap the key that many times to move there. If you tried to hold the key down and decide to let go at what you thought was the right time, you were usually wrong and fell into the spike pit below. In my more revised version of my Megaman game in which I used while() looped movement instead, both of these issues were non-existant.

2. If you're using the repeat for everything, you can't use two keys at once. This was another issue that was very evident in my old Megaman game. If you were running and had to jump, you couldn't keep moving forward after you hit the jump key. The movement's repeat would stop, and it would start the jump verb. The same happened with shooting. You couldn't shoot while moving. How we worked around jumping was by stopping first, then jumping, then moving again. For shooting you would either just have to stop and shoot like a maniac, or you could press the shoot and arrow keys simultaniously. You can see that this so-called Megaman game played nothing like a Megaman game. Reason being: I wasn't knowledgable enough to program loops into everything so I used the default key repeat. Again, with my revised Megaman game using loop movement, both of these problems were also non-existant.

There are many other problems and off-shoots of these problems that come about due to using the default windows key repeat system. Just as an example in order to show the seriousness of this issue, I've taken my original Zelda pixel movement demo and taken out all of the loops. It has the exact same movement, only the verbs now use the default key repeat instead of a loop. You'll notice how dramatic of a difference there is between them. The one with repeat is hardly tolerable enough to play, yet we at BYOND deal with it in most of the games we play more or less.

Original Zelda: Link's Awakening Demo

Zelda: Link's Awakening Demo Using Repeat

The movement is exactly the same in both of these besides the fact that I didn't use while() loops for movement in the repeat one, I used the default key repeat. You can see for yourself the results of the failure of using the Windows key repeat in a game for movement.

In conclusion, something desperately needs to be done about this problem. The Windows key repeat system is -not- meant to be used in a game. It's meant to be used for typing. When you type a letter, you wouldn't want it automatically repeating if you didn't take your finger off of it fast enough. That's why the pause is there. You'll also notice that when you type and hold down a letter, then switch to another letter while holding down the original, then let go of the second letter, the first one doesn't start typing again. You can't type two keys at once. If you press two keys at once, one goes after the other. You can't hold two keys at once either. I hope that this is seen, and I desperately hope that this problem is addressed. Not everybody can make everything into a loop in their games, and most don't. This is why BYOND games generally seem like trash to outsiders and even to some of us here. Fixing the repeat to be a repeat actually meant for games without all of the issues of the current one, one that acts as if you programmed all of the verbs with loops, would cause every single game on BYOND to increase in quality so dramatically that they wouldn't be labeled as BYOND games anymore, they'd simply be games - a lot of them then decent ones at that.