ID:132230
 
Forum_account wrote:
That's better than how it originally sounded, but I still get the impression that DS will never get certain updates because they'd be hard to implement on the flash client.

In my opinion they should just turn BYOND into a "Flash game maker and portal". Basically DM would be a scripting language that compiles into Flash and the site would just be a Flash game portal. Dream Seeker could easily be replaced with a Flash projector exe of the Flash client.

Of course they'd have to add single player support for it to work out and servers would still need to be run through DD because Flash is nowhere near decent for a server. But, from a business perspective, I think it would be the way to go at this point.
Aaiko wrote:
Forum_account wrote:
That's better than how it originally sounded, but I still get the impression that DS will never get certain updates because they'd be hard to implement on the flash client.

In my opinion they should just turn BYOND into a "Flash game maker and portal". Basically DM would be a scripting language that compiles into Flash and the site would just be a Flash game portal. Dream Seeker could easily be replaced with a Flash projector exe of the Flash client.

Of course they'd have to add single player support for it to work out and servers would still need to be run through DD because Flash is nowhere near decent for a server. But, from a business perspective, I think it would be the way to go at this point.

I agree that there may be a time where we should phase out the Dream Seeker client as well as the pager.

Make things more streamlined, implement it within the site!
I believe to make Flash more accessible, we need to make a few design changes to the website.
In response to Flame Sage
Flame Sage wrote:
I agree that there may be a time where we should phase out the Dream Seeker client as well as the pager.

Make things more streamlined, implement it within the site!
I believe to make Flash more accessible, we need to make a few design changes to the website.

I agree with the above statement just remember people dont like change, remember what happened last time they changed or when then introduced ads.
In response to Flame Sage
What's with Single-Player Mode?
I don't get it at all, is it so hard to some people to make their games are played by a single player? Oh come on, make a RPG with tons of NPCs and the player'll do everything on his own. O.o
Aaiko wrote:
In my opinion they should just turn BYOND into a "Flash game maker and portal". Basically DM would be a scripting language that compiles into Flash and the site would just be a Flash game portal. Dream Seeker could easily be replaced with a Flash projector exe of the Flash client.

I'm inclined to disagree strongly because BYOND could be so much more than Flash. BYOND could implement features that would make it stand out from Flash. Instead of BYOND's features being strictly a subset of Flash's features, BYOND could add things that Flash game developers want. Imagine how many developers BYOND could draw in if the BYOND staff talked with Flash game developers, compiled a list of "things people wish Flash had or did better", then added those things to BYOND. BYOND could really leverage the fact that it's not Flash to make BYOND a very desirable platform for game development.

But, because BYOND doesn't do any of those things to take advantage of being its own platform, I can't strongly disagree with you. Instead I more mildly disagree.

If DM is just used to make Flash games, why not just use Flash? There are plenty of tools for making Flash games that are already available. All you'd gain by using DM is multiplayer support, but there's probably a networking library for Flash already.

Making BYOND the "easy way to make Flash games" might have worked 12 years ago when Flash was new and learning DM wouldn't have been considered a hassle (because nobody was experienced with flash, so they'd either be learning Flash or learning DM). Making BYOND the "easy way to make multiplayer games" is a fine idea, but the novelty of multiplayer gaming has worn off. It's not enough for a game to just be multiplayer, the games now have to be good too.

BYOND could still make it as being the "easy way for kids to make games". Game development is an actual thing that people study now, so providing people with a place to get started is still a current niche. The way it is now, BYOND's learning curve is too steep, it's not powerful enough, and it doesn't have enough educational materials.
In response to Eternal_Memories
Eternal_Memories wrote:
What's with Single-Player Mode?
I don't get it at all, is it so hard to some people to make their games are played by a single player? Oh come on, make a RPG with tons of NPCs and the player'll do everything on his own. O.o

The reason people are talking about "single player support" here is because the BYOND's Flash client won't be able to run games, it'll only be able to connect to a server. It's not that the game lacks features needed for people to play by themselves, the Flash client lacks the ability to run games so you won't have the ability to try a game by yourself through the Flash client.
In response to Forum_account
Web games are the future. Zynga makes more money than Activision Blizzard and EA put together with a fraction of the cost. Other web game companies make a lot of money as well.

BYOND could probably go on forever like it is now. Little growth, slow updates, niche market. But if it's going to be taken seriously or make lots of money and make the developers lots of money, it's going to have to adapt. And it is with the Flash client, but it's not going to be enough.

All I know is, I'm leaning towards Java/Flash development myself, and if they want me to still make games and put them on BYOND.com, they'd be wise to accept all Flash games. I've invested a lot into BYOND and I want to see it succeed, but the engine just isn't enough for me anymore.

But if they're going to accept all Flash games and turn BYOND.com into a Flash game hub, they might as well lean DM towards making Flash games. It'll still be its own scripting language like it is now and have it's own features, but it'll have the added bonuses of being known as an "easy Flash game maker" and such.

As for the "why not just use Flash", you could say the same for the current setup... "why not just use C++?" I find DM the most simple to use language out there and half the stuff you need to make games is already made for you, especially networking. So if DM was as powerful as everything else, it would be an easy choice what to use to make games.
In response to Aaiko
Aaiko wrote:
Web games are the future. Zynga makes more money than Activision Blizzard and EA put together with a fraction of the cost. Other web game companies make a lot of money as well.

Zynga revenue 2010: 850 million USD.

EA revenue 2010: 3.64 billion USD.
Activision Blizzard revenue 2010: 4.47 billion USD.


You were saying?
In response to Airjoe
Airjoe wrote:
You were saying?

I guess I worded it wrong. I meant worth, not revenue. And I also thought Zynga already went public, but they haven't yet.

Once they go public they will be worth more than the two companies combined. Not to mention their crazy growth.

They are currently worth more than EA and almost as much as Activision Blizzard. But once they go public, they will be worth more than both combined.

On the revenue side, their revenue is up 80% from the 2010 you posted.
In response to Aaiko
Aaiko wrote:
Airjoe wrote:
You were saying?

I guess I worded it wrong. I meant worth, not revenue. And I also thought Zynga already went public, but they haven't yet.

Once they go public they will be worth more than the two companies combined. Not to mention their crazy growth.

They are currently worth more than EA and almost as much as Activision Blizzard. But once they go public, they will be worth more than both combined.

On the revenue side, their revenue is up 80% from the 2010 you posted.

If BYOND does goes all-in dedicating themselves to Flash, I don't think it would be a bad idea at all.
Perhaps also the ability to create Android applications that automatically connect to the BYOND Hub (or a game)
Would be nice since all it would be is a Flash client.

I don't really agree with allowing non-BYOND games on here though.
In response to Flame Sage
BYOND isn't BYOND if you include games not programmed in DM.

Leave the non games for newgrounds and the like.
In response to Aaiko
Aaiko wrote:
Web games are the future. Zynga makes more money than Activision Blizzard and EA put together with a fraction of the cost. Other web game companies make a lot of money as well.

I disagree. Games like Farmville have benefited much more from Facebook integration than they have from simply being Flash games. I can support this claim by simply pointing towards Newgrounds. Flash games have been around forever yet only the ones on Facebook are the hugely successful. It's not Flash making them popular, it's the social aspect.

Zynga was simply at the right place at the right time. Nobody will reproduce their success just like nobody will be the next Minecraft.

BYOND could probably go on forever like it is now. Little growth, slow updates, niche market. But if it's going to be taken seriously or make lots of money and make the developers lots of money, it's going to have to adapt. And it is with the Flash client, but it's not going to be enough.

There's nothing wrong with appealing to a niche market as long as it can sustain itself. From the outset I don't think BYOND was ever about raking in tons of cash, but it would certainly be nice. I suspect the main reason BYOND isn't "taken seriously" mostly has to do with the community rather than the software itself. To me it still seems like BYOND is coming out of the dark ages and it's going to take time to fix up the community and get more decent games made.

All I know is, I'm leaning towards Java/Flash development myself, and if they want me to still make games and put them on BYOND.com, they'd be wise to accept all Flash games. I've invested a lot into BYOND and I want to see it succeed, but the engine just isn't enough for me anymore.

But if they're going to accept all Flash games and turn BYOND.com into a Flash game hub, they might as well lean DM towards making Flash games. It'll still be its own scripting language like it is now and have it's own features, but it'll have the added bonuses of being known as an "easy Flash game maker" and such.

I don't think accepting Flash games or turning BYOND into a Flash hub is a good idea. BYOND isn't Flash, it's as simple as that. BYOND is for BYOND games, not Flash games. Having a tab for Flash clients on hub pages would work out fine, but only if the hub page is for a BYOND game.

I understand where you're coming from, constantly bumping into BYOND's limitations and feeling constrained. I think that is the problem we should be addressing, not Flash distribution. Things like increasing the frame rate without destroying network performance (via tick_lag changes) would be nice and it would benefit the current Flash client as well. The engine just needs some more horsepower.
In response to SuperAntx
SuperAntx wrote:
I suspect the main reason BYOND isn't "taken seriously" mostly has to do with the community rather than the software itself. To me it still seems like BYOND is coming out of the dark ages and it's going to take time to fix up the community and get more decent games made.

There's no way that having a bad community could help the situation, but I think it's hard to say that the bad community is the cause of BYOND's current situation. I think it's more likely that the software itself is difficult to use and is marketed poorly, so it doesn't attract a good community. Being a bad product (or being a decent product that's presented badly) caused BYOND to attract the type of community that it has.

BYOND really has two communities - the developer community and the gamer community. Most of the undesirable people are in the gamer community. The people who make rips are more gamers than developers so their existence isn't making the developer community look bad. The developer community is rather lonely, but it's not a bad or negative community.

I highly doubt that potential users come to BYOND, see the bad community, and leave immediately. It's more likely that people just never find BYOND in the first place. Or, if they do come across BYOND, they can't figure out what it is because it looks more like a site for playing games than creating games. If people can figure out that BYOND is for making games, they'll probably think it's an RPGMaker kind of program because there's nothing produced by the BYOND staff that says "here's what BYOND can do". Potential users can only look at existing games to surmise that BYOND is a tool for making RPGs and chatrooms. It's not the community's fault for making these things, it's BYOND's fault for not clearly explaining to potential users how BYOND works and what it's capable of.
In response to SuperAntx
SuperAntx wrote:
There's nothing wrong with appealing to a niche market as long as it can sustain itself. From the outset I don't think BYOND was ever about raking in tons of cash, but it would certainly be nice. I suspect the main reason BYOND isn't "taken seriously" mostly has to do with the community rather than the software itself. To me it still seems like BYOND is coming out of the dark ages and it's going to take time to fix up the community and get more decent games made.

My hope for BYOND was that someone would develop a really clever, original concept (like Tetris when it first came out, or MineCraft recently), that would become popular, and then people would see that our software could be used for this sort of thing. It would be marketing by proxy. Unfortunately, we haven't really had any hits-- NEStalgia got some press for a while (and I think could be very successful as the 8-bit multiplayer merger has a lot of old-school appeal), SS13 has a niche following, and there are a few other minor successes, but clearly we're not on the radar yet. The web-based platform should give better exposure but it's still up to users to make addictive games.

The software has a lot of limitations, for sure, and I don't want the practice of using it to be all about working around those limitations (and I think anyone who feels that way really shouldn't bother with it). If the advantages BYOND brings are outweighed by these hardships, then it's not the right platform for you. I would never want to compete with Flash in making single-player games because, frankly, Flash is a lot better at that. We designed this language from the ground-up to be about multi-player (although some of our original ideas are long outdated), and for that reason we had to make sacrifices for single-player support. But I don't think this means that hit games can't be made with BYOND. For example, there are "real life" games that sell hundreds of thousands of copies that require nothing more than a deck of cards and some playing pieces.

As far as the community goes, we're doing some things now that will undo a lot of the errors I made in a misguided attempt to "social networkize" BYOND years back, and I think it will have a positive effect, if by nothing more than putting more power in the hands of the moderators. I'll post more on that later (it has turned into quite a project).
In response to Tom
Tom wrote:
As far as the community goes, we're doing some things now that will undo a lot of the errors I made in a misguided attempt to "social networkize" BYOND years back, and I think it will have a positive effect, if by nothing more than putting more power in the hands of the moderators. I'll post more on that later (it has turned into quite a project).

Will this be something we can externally see? (Website change, changes to the functionality of BYOND) or is this more of a backend social construct?
In response to Flame Sage
Flame Sage wrote:
Will this be something we can externally see? (Website change, changes to the functionality of BYOND) or is this more of a backend social construct?

Basically we're going to be merging the blog & forum system into one, providing a consistent way to discuss topics of interest to BYONDers.
In response to Tom
Tom wrote:
Basically we're going to be merging the blog & forum system into one, providing a consistent way to discuss topics of interest to BYONDers.

Not sure if like. My opinion.

Can we have a beta testing area?
In response to A.T.H.K
A.T.H.K wrote:
Tom wrote:
Basically we're going to be merging the blog & forum system into one, providing a consistent way to discuss topics of interest to BYONDers.

Not sure if like. My opinion.

Can we have a beta testing area?

No, because it really isn't an option. The current system is a failure and a nightmare to maintain. I'm sure some people won't like the new stuff but that's just how it goes. I'll issue refunds for anyone who feels jilted out of blog-related member benefits. On the plus side, a number of feature requests have been resolved in this new setup.
In response to Tom
Fair enough, do us proud Tom.
In response to Tom
Tom wrote:
I would never want to compete with Flash in making single-player games because, frankly, Flash is a lot better at that.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

BYOND games have to be able to compete with Flash games in terms of quality because game players won't care what tool was used to make the game. Knytt was made with Multimedia Fusion 2, which from the looks of it is less focused on game development than BYOND is. Aside from Nifflas' other games, I don't know of anything else made with Multimedia Fusion 2, so I'm not sure that marketing by proxy is a good plan.

Multiplayer gaming isn't a niche anymore so BYOND games won't be considered good just because they have multiplayer support. BYOND games have to actually be good.

The software has a lot of limitations, for sure, and I don't want the practice of using it to be all about working around those limitations (and I think anyone who feels that way really shouldn't bother with it).

I'm also not sure what this means. BYOND knowingly has limitations and it comes with a programming language so you can implement the features it doesn't provide. There are some features it makes more sense for BYOND to provide (like this one) and some it makes more sense for users to implement themselves (like this one). I hope this isn't true, but it sounds like you think that every feature would be better handled by BYOND.
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