BYOND Journalism sure has been on fire lately with so much going on and so much interest within the community. At that, I began to think. What is the first thing you think of when you think of the word 'journalism'? That's right, a newspaper! I now present you with BYOND Weekly, a newspaper that will give you all of the latest news from around BYOND in one neat little package.
On The Front Page
BYOND 4.0 Version 471.1076
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I'm sure you've all noticed by now that BYOND released version 471.1076. For Google Chrome users like myself, this update is a bit of a plus! Looking in the release notes, you'll notice this at the top:
"Recent versions of Google Chrome have been mangling the byond:// URLs used to download games and turning the # character into %23 when passing the URL to the pager. While this is not a BYOND bug, the pager is now capable of working around this issue my recognizing some of the malformed URLs and attempting to correct the damage. If problems persist, please use a different browser until Google fixes the issue. (Jamel1027, PokemonGodess, Gokussj22, Darkjohn66, Moonlight Memento, Tubutas)"
I believe that says it all for that issue. Many other issues were fixed involving Dream Daemon, Maker, and Seeker (all of which can be found back in the release notes). There was only one new feature, but it definitely caught my eye:
"When connected to another server via link() or when reconnecting to the same world, the skin will no longer reset to its original state, remove cloned panes and windows, or delete any controls created at runtime. This should provide a smoother transition when switching between servers. Several issues with the skin 'flickering' have also been improved or eliminated."
Anything to improve the speed of anything in BYOND is a plus for me. I always hated how long it would sometimes take to do things like that.
In Other News
The Return of Calus CoRPS
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Calus CoRPS is knocking off the dust and cobwebs and has announced that he is working on a LineWalk game! Originally, it was only a proof-of-concept demo in which you walked to the end of an area in order to find the prize at the end; you would get to the end by drawing lines with your mouse for the little guy to jump and walk on. Now Calus is back and making a completely polished game for it!
Calus has recently given this announcement to continue LineWalk in two posts of his (Part 1, Part 2). I was given the privilege to test LineWalk online with him. After some suggestions, I convinced him to lower the tick_lag, as he pointed out in Part 2, and he says it's changed for the better! It's good to finally see an online BYOND game with pixel movement around here! I can't wait to see LineWalk's future progress.
Collaborative BYOND Project?
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Could it be possible? It would certainly be neat if it was! Vector2 made a post about the idea of a collaborative BYOND project. He seems to have created a forum link for the open source project.
I've never really seen anything like this succeed around BYOND, but it seems a little better organized and there's actually some interest! I would love for something like this to work, but I can't really hop in and help them due to how busy I am with life and personal projects. It seems they are suggesting ideas right now. I personally hope to see more out of this in the future.
Kajika's ideas about BYOND
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Now that Kajika has become active again, he's written a post on his ideas about how BYOND could be improved. He talks here about personal responsibility, and not relying on others all of the time.
Other problems he presents are a lack of resources, being libraries or demos or what have you. He also mentions something very true a lot of the time, and that's that programmers usually make up the entire development team. Going further, he mentions that he believes the forums suck and that there is a lack of debugging tools. He goes on to mention his ideas for solutions.
He mentions at the end that he's looking for your ideas as well! If you think BYOND has some major problems that need light shone on them, open your mouth and let it be known! Maybe it will be heard and a change will be made.
BYOND CSS Taking Requests Again
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Qubic recently announced that BYOND CSS is re-opening the requests they are taking in for custom CSS sheets. Apparently the last post they made to open up requests again was closed. Qubic now re-opened the requests under one condition, you need to pay for the sheets now.
The sheets are only $1.50 each, but the price is bound to deter some people who otherwise might ask for one. Probably a good strategy since they were apparently flooded by a lot of requests. Want a custom CSS sheet but don't want to do the work yourself and have an extra 1.5 bucks sitting around that you don't know what to do with? This is probably the place to go.
Back To Programming For Danny Roe
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After his recent membership renewal, Danny Roe has made a post in which he talks about the fact that he is back into programming due to his newly-found free time!
It seems Danny is working on BYOND's fairly recent isometric capabilities by trying to figure out how it all works. It seems he is also working on a new strategy game as well!
I can't get enough of his CSS.
The Get Something Done Challenge
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Quite disappointing! The Get Something Done Challenge was -finally- released by IainPeregrine recently. Not only were there very few participants in the end, but he didn't even reward any medals!
Jp's Dream Catcher, Geldonyetick's Mech Game Framwork, F0lak's Haz Wars, and IainPeregrine's own Artemis library were the only participants to make it to the end.
I haven't tried any of the entries yet (Artemis is definitely one I want to check out very soon), but they sound good in Iain's report. I hope you all check them out and maybe next time around there will be some more participants to make it to the end and get something done!
The Big Five
The section gives the latest information regarding activity in the five main BYOND Guilds: Action, Anime, Casual, RPG, and Strategy.
BYOND Strategy:
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As usual, ACWraith is always keeping us up-to-date with the latest BYOND Strategy activity with his Along The Tech Tree. Not a "Tech Tree" reader? I highly suggest you check it out!
BYOND Casual:
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Crashed made a post on BYOND Casual in an attempt to remind the community of the BYOND Casual Guild submission criteria. It seems they've been getting a lot of anime game submissions. The post might also be an attempt to stir up a little guild activity. Always a nice thing to see!
BYOND Action:
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No recent news
BYOND Anime:
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No very recent news. There is a Featured Game of the Month report for a game I personally think you should check out called Pokemon Z. It finally gives BYOND Anime a truly different game to show the BYOND Community.
BYOND RPG:
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Mikau made a post in an attempt to stir up some guild activity. The post didn't get too much activity, however, so Mikau responded with a post in which he criticized the community for always talking about having more guild activity, but not walking that talk. I think it's a great idea to have more guild activity! If you want to, I highly suggest you try to participate.
That's all for this issue of BYOND Weekly! If you feel I missed important news or have news for the next upcoming week, email me at [email protected] and you will probably see it on here!
This issue of BYOND Weekly is brought to you by stupid terrorists*
Thanks, stupid terrorists!
*nobody was aimed at, harmed, or scared to death in the making of this issue
