ID:266041
 
Suddenly, upon reading the DM Guide Preface, an idea for a game struck me.

Now, myself being a very 'meta' guy, I am always pointing out when things are meta (i.e. heroes who are making a comic within a comic, a movie about directors filming a movie, etc.).

"So you want to play god. It happens to a certain fraction of us--the desire to create a world. It could be a fantastical place, a land of adventure and mystery, or it could be a secluded island, a secret hideout, or an outpost on Mars--who knows.

To conjure such an illusionary realm, one must know the right incantations, powerful spells of arcane origin that weave the thread of reality into a tapestry of your own design." -- Dan of Dantom

After reading this, I realized that there could quite easily be a game about making a BYOND game. (With a creative spin to it, of course.)

Let's take Dan's words there quite literally.

There could be some interesting elements to this, like using magic powers to create DM code.
Dark, forbidden powers could be the basis of 'evil' fan-games.

Artists could train their abilities to make art for programmers to use. They could sell their art or give it away free.

Created art and code could be stolen and sold on the black market, etc. (Giving out your source would be a possibility, spawning copies of your world.)

Now, games would actually become worlds in the game.
If you use your magic to create a world, you could potentially see an actual area in the game inspired by what you wanted to be there.
Players would play your game, and you would see them interacting with stuff in your world, which you could then modify. (Players wouldn't be actual players, but NPC's with some sort of AI.)
You could control what is there, from 'pbags' to advanced plot.


(Okay, most of this is me ranting randomly.)
Wow... very interesting.
Yea I've had the idea but all you'd be doing is simplifying Byond for the average user, limiting it's capabilities and making it multiplayer. But, I'm not all doom and gloom on this one. Going from the Dream Maker to this is a downgrade in my opinion however, a game where players can manipulate the very fabric of their reality... Now that's an upgrade from nothing and a very substantial upgrade.

In this case perhaps seeing the concept as Byond within Byond is actually limiting you and taking the concept in the broader sense would create a more for filling game?
In response to Kyle_ZX
I've even had an idea about a Byond based game, but alas I can't spill my secrets, It's not a game in the making, it's still in the designing phase, but your game sounds pretty interesting, so I would check it out.
In response to Kyle_ZX
Kyle_ZX wrote:
In this case perhaps seeing the concept as Byond within Byond is actually limiting you and taking the concept in the broader sense would create a more for filling game?

Yeah, I kind of noticed that part way through typing that post. I don't really know exactly how the gameplay would go, or what the limitations of such powers would be.

Making the game itself seems like it might be quite an undertaking, because of the amount of content required to make it, so the scope is quite large. (I'm not currently up to making this game. I was just throwing the idea out there.)
Sonder and I were thinking about doing something like this a ways back. We were going to design custom icons for a lot of keys we know of and/or allow people to design their own icon. Keys of old would be involved in the story line. You can imagine the rest.
The whole idea of this game is that the developer does little work and the player does the majority.
In response to Kyle_ZX
Wait... So the player actually uses DM and makes a game?!
Preposterous!
...I think.

Actually, I'm curious what you mean by that. What is your take on this concept, more specifically?
In response to Complex Robot
This would be a very nice solution. Programming languages are developed in other programming languages correct? So having a simplified DM compiler created inside of a DM program wouldn't be a super leap, although it would require quite a bit of work on the developers end to have everything syntaxed properly.
In response to Danbriggs
Haha.
That's awesome.
Basically, you can greatly simplify DM and make all the procs already done. So, you can have procs like I_Can_Has_GM() or LoginScreen(), etc.
Heh. Though, coding like that is not what most people want to do when making a game.
In response to Complex Robot
You can do it that way, or what I would do for simplicity is use a Command Prompt style of command typing. I.E. If you type in "control /world: startup" Would be the syntax, where the first word is the command, in this case, "control". Basically means that you're taking control of something. "/world:" is the object that you're taking control of. Now if you're bothering to take control of it, what do you want the /world object to do? In this case, after the colon will be the command for the world object to run, in this case "startup". Basically meaning to create a new world. You could add onto that as such:
<code> control /world: startup "My World" </code>
The string after the startup command could be the name of the newly created world. This is just a very basic idea to what your in-game syntax could look like. Just throwing out a few idea's here.
"forbidden powers could be the basis of 'evil' fan-games."

Fan-games aren't evil. Rips are evil, and so are the demonic overlords who "create" them.
In response to Superfetch
Haha.
Thanks for clarifying.